Amazon's rumored 'Ice' phone will embrace Google's apps
Amazon reportedly wants to move on from its failed Fire Phone with a new project nicknamed “Ice.”
The Amazon Fire Phone didn't last long.
Amazon seems to be writing its own story of Ice and Fire.
After the company's first Fire Phone flamed out, Amazon is said to be going back to the drawing board for its next push into smartphone territory. According to a report from NDTV's Gadget 360, Amazon's working on a phone internally nicknamed "Ice." The phone will run Android 7.1.1 and have full support for the Google Play store and Google's apps.
The Fire Phone failed in part because it ran its own version of Android without Google's apps. The Ice phone will feature all of the usual Android goodies, including Google's AI Assistant. Amazon has its own virtual assistant, Alexa, that competes directly with the Google Assistant on the smart home speaker front: Amazon Echo versus the Google Home.
According to Gadget 360, this phone won't have Alexa. It'll have a fingerprint scanner on the back -- like the Google Pixel -- as well as 2GB of memory and 16GB of storage. The Ice phone will initially be targeted at developing markets like India, according to the report, so even if all of these rumors are true, it may never make it to the US, UK or Australia.
Amazon didn't immediately respond to CNET's request for comment.