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Amazon plans two smart phones, like iPhone 5S and 5C

Amazon is taking a leaf out of Apple's book with rumours of a high-powered smart phone and a lower-specced cheaper version.

Richard Trenholm Former Movie and TV Senior Editor
Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.
Expertise Films, TV, Movies, Television, Technology
Richard Trenholm
2 min read

Amazon is taking a leaf out of Apple's book with not one but two smart phones. Like the recent iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C, Amazon could be planning two phones: a high-powered model with novel features, and a lower-specced cheaper version.

The more expensive of the two, codenamed Smith, is reported to boast an eye-tracking interface, which has a camera at each corner of the screen that follow your eyes, and feed that information back to the screen which moves in sync with your eyes to create a 3D effect. Sounds trippy.

The cheaper phone is said to be codenamed Project B, running Fire OS software similar to the Kindle Fire.

Amazon is getting quite excited about hardware, recently announcing three new tablets: the Kindle Fire HDX 7 and 8.9 and updated Kindle Fire HD, pictured above. Amazon's tablets run on Android software, but you wouldn't recognise it from your Samsung Galaxy phone or other Android device. Instead, the online bookseller-turned-everything-seller has heavily customised the interface to turn it into a storefront for films, music, ebooks and other stuff you might want to buy from Amazon.

The brace of smart phones will presumably use similar software, with one rumoured feature designed to encourage you to spend your money with Amazon: an image recognition thing that takes a photo of an object in front of you and then matches it to a product on sale on the website.

So when you're in Poundland and you see a multipack of cleaning products you like but can't be bothered to carry them home, you can take a picture and snap it up from Amazon for home delivery, and potentially a better price.

Would you buy an Amazon phone? What can Amazon offer that other phones can't? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.