This post is sponsored by AT&T. As a promotional post, it reflects the views of the sponsor, not ReadWrite’s editors.
Don’t you wish some days that you were a multitasking mutant with four arms? Picture it: You’re walking your dog with a leash in one hand, smartphone in the other, and you want to type something in. Good luck.
Sending a text message or searching for the nearest restaurant via mobile app is hard enough to achieve with two hands. And while voice commands are becoming more popular, they are not 100% reliable—which leaves you sounding like a crazy person as you argue with your digital assistant.
Amazon’s first smartphone, the Fire, has an answer for scenarios that leave you feeling like you’re all thumbs. It’s called Dynamic Perspective. The phone’s four front-facing cameras enable it to respond to how you hold, view, and move your phone. Additional sensors in the phone allow you to use designated actions—Tilt, Auto-Scroll, Swivel, and Peek—to navigate menus and access shortcuts in apps and on the home screen—only one hand required.
One-Handed Short Cuts
A “Tilt” of the wrist to the left from the home screen lets you navigate to menus. Tilt to the right and you can access useful information and shortcuts. You can also attach photos to a text message, view song lyrics, and more by using the Tilt feature.
With “Auto-Scroll,” you can scan long Web pages without ever having to touch the screen.
The “Swivel” move from side to side lets you access important notifications and quick actions like Flashlight, Settings or Amazon’s “Mayday” customer-assistance app.
The “Peek” feature is especially novel. It takes advantage of the Dynamic Perspective to allow me to see different angles in an image or even uncover secret information—information that app makers aren’t making available on other smartphones.
For example, if you’re ordering tickets online, you’ll want to make sure you have good seats. A Fire-ready app will let you see the whole stadium—and tilt the Fire to see 90 degrees to the left and right of your seat, as if you were actually there. Games are another category where developers can make use of these views.
Is There An App For That?
Amazon has worked to make sure the Fire phone has all of the most popular apps and games on the Amazon Appstore, and that app makers are taking advantage of Dynamic Perspective.
If you don’t immediately see your favorite app, don’t despair. The Dynamic Perspective software-development kit is now available. More apps are expected to join top-tier publishers with their own Dynamic Perspective titles for the Fire phone.
Where To Get Dynamic Perspective
Amazon Fire with Dynamic Perspective is exclusively on AT&T with 32GB or 64GB of storage. To celebrate its release, AT&T is also offering the Fire for no money down, with no upgrade fee, activation fee, or annual contract.
Photos by Taylor Hatmaker for ReadWrite
