z*******n
发帖数: 1034 | 1 Sdk:
https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-phone
Dear Customers,
We're excited to unveil our newest innovation—Fire, the first smartphone
designed by Amazon.
Fire is the only smartphone with Dynamic Perspective and Firefly, two new
technologies that allow you to see and interact with your world through a
whole new lens.
Dynamic Perspective uses a custom-designed sensor system that responds to
the way you hold, view, and move your phone. It opens up a new class of
immersive apps and games not possible on other smartphones, as well as one-
handed navigation and gestures like auto-scroll—read long web pages and
books without ever touching the screen.
Firefly is a new technology that quickly recognizes printed web and email
addresses, phone numbers, QR and bar codes, artwork, movies, music, and
millions of products, making it easy to discover information, share items
with friends, and more. It works in seconds—simply press and hold the
Firefly button.
Fire is the only smartphone to put everything you love about Amazon in the
palm of your hand—instant access to over 33 million songs, apps, games,
movies, TV shows, audiobooks, magazines, and books, plus exclusive features
like Mayday, ASAP, Second Screen, X-Ray, free unlimited photo storage in the
cloud, and more.
It's also packed with powerful hardware—a 13MP camera with optical image
stabilization for stunning photos and 1080p HD video, a 2.2 GHz quad-core
processor and 2GB of RAM for fast, fluid performance, a beautiful 4.7" HD
display, dual stereo speakers, and Dolby Digital audio.
Fire is available exclusively on AT&T. You can pre-order yours today. For a
limited time, Fire also includes a full year of Amazon Prime—FREE Two-Day
Shipping on millions of items, unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows
with Prime Instant Video, unlimited, ad-free streaming and downloading of
over a million songs and hundreds of playlists, and over 500,000 books to
borrow from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. If you're already a Prime
member, we'll add 12 months to your existing account.
Thank you for being a customer,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
PS — You can experience Fire in person at AT&T stores on 7/25.
PPS — If you're a developer, feel free to check out our powerful SDKs for
both Firefly and Dynamic Perspective.
Share
| z*******n
发帖数: 1034 | 2 Amazon Fire Phone’s Missed Opportunities
By FARHAD MANJOOJune 19, 2014
亚马逊的Fire手机，高端路线还能赢得市场吗
新品测评FARHAD MANJOO2014年06月19日
亚马逊CEO杰夫·贝佐斯介绍Fire手机。这款手机与苹果和三星的高端手机定价相当，
特性包括图像识别系统和3D显示。
亚马逊CEO杰夫·贝佐斯介绍Fire手机。这款手机与苹果和三星的高端手机定价相当，
特性包括图像识别系统和3D显示。
Ted S. Warren/Associated Press
SEATTLE — When Amazon invited the media and hundreds of its most loyal
customers to witness the unveiling of a new device on Wednesday, everyone
thought the company would introduce a smartphone made in the mold of its
line of tablet computers: pretty good and really cheap.
西雅图——当亚马逊(Amazon)邀请媒体和该公司最忠贞不二的数百名用户在周三见证它
对一款新品的发布时，每个人都以为，亚马逊会推出一款和它的系列平板电脑风格一致
的智能手机：相当物美，极其价廉。
Everyone was wrong. Though the device is called the Fire phone, Amazon’s
new gadget is less a phone than a pocketable cash register hooked directly
into the retailer’s intelligent warehouses. And it’s not cheap. The Fire
phone sells for $199 with a two-year AT&T contract. Although it also comes
with a free one-year subscription to Amazon’s Prime membership, the Fire
phone is essentially the same price as high-end phones made by Apple and
Samsung.
所有人都错了。虽然亚马逊的这款新设备的名字是Fire手机，可它却更像是一部和亚马
逊的智能仓库直接挂钩的可移动收银机。而且它也不便宜。虽然手机附带了免费的一年
期亚马逊Prime会员计划，但在本质上其价格却和苹果(Apple)及三星(Samsung)制造的
高端手机无甚差别。
For Amazon, a company whose previous devices have had innovative pricing
plans that often involved selling devices at cost, the Fire phone’s
uninspired price tag is a surprising disappointment. The world needed a
great, cheap smartphone. With its huge reach, obsessive dedication to
customer service, and a willingness to forgo immediate profits, Amazon seems
uniquely capable of delivering such a device.
亚马逊之前的设备曾推出创新性的定价计划，这些计划往往涉及以成本价销售设备。对
这样一家公司而言，Fire手机毫无创意的标价既出人意料、又令人失望。这个世界需要
一部卓越的廉价智能手机。作为一家影响力巨大、专注于为客户服务的公司，亚马逊愿
意放弃短期的利润，因而对发布这样一款设备似乎具有独到的能力。
Stuart Goldenberg
But instead of a cheap phone, Amazon delivered a device packed with many
high-end, whiz-bang features. Some of those features may be attractive to
people who already love Amazon, but for people who aren’t looking to be
hooked so intimately into Amazon’s brain, it’s hard to see what this phone
offers over the iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy or any other top-of-the-line
smartphone on the market today.
然而，亚马逊没有发布廉价手机，而是推出了一款配备了许多高端和炫酷功能的手机。
其中的一些功能对本来就喜爱亚马逊的客户也许具有吸引力，可是，那些不希望和亚马
逊的核心服务如此紧密地关联在一起的客户难以看出，与iPhone、和三星的Galaxy手机
或当今市场上其他任何顶尖的智能手机相比，这部手机有什么过人之处。
“It’s a really premium phone,” said Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s founder
and chief executive, when asked during an interview about the phone’s price
. “We’ve packed a lot of hardware and expensive material in.” Mr. Bezos
declined to say whether the company would make a profit on each phone sold.
In the past, the company has eschewed that model of hardware sales. But he
said the Fire phone’s technological capabilities made it a bargain at its
price.
在一次采访中，亚马逊创始人兼首席执行官杰弗里·P·贝佐斯(Jeffrey P. Bezos)被
问到了这部手机的定价，他当时说，“这是一部相当高档的手机。我们在里面加入了许
多硬件和昂贵的材料。”贝佐斯拒绝回答该公司是否会从每部售出的手机中挣到利润。
过去，亚马逊没有采纳这种硬件销售模式。然而他说，Fire手机的技术性能让它的性价
比相当高。
It’s true that the Fire phone has several novel features. Among them is an
image-recognition system, Firefly, that will let you identify any book,
movie, phone number or other object you point at your phone. Firefly is the
heart of the phone’s connection to Amazon’s shopping engine. Aim the
device at anything around your house, like a bag of cat litter or a tube of
toothpaste, and the phone instantly recognizes it and gives you an option to
buy the item and have it delivered immediately. During a short
demonstration of the phone, which is available for order now and will ship
on July 25, I found that feature to be eerily accurate. It flawlessly
recognized pretty much everything I pointed to, offering me a way to buy
something on the fly — from Amazon.
Fire手机确实有几项新奇的功能。其中一项是图像识别系统Firefly，你可以用该功能
识别任何书籍、电影、手机号码或你用手机指向的任何物体。Firefly是连接该款手机
和亚马逊购物引擎的核心。如果你把手机对准房间内的任何物品，比如一包猫砂或一支
牙膏，它会即刻识别此物，给你提供购买此物并立即送货上门的选择。在对该手机进行
简短的示范操作时，我发现，这项功能的准确率高得吓人。基本上，它能准确无误地识
别任何我指向的物品，并给我提供一种立即从亚马逊购买该款商品的方式。这款手机目
前就可以订购，出货期为7月25日。
Mr. Bezos pushed back against the idea that there was anything nefarious
about this connection to Amazon’s store. “Helping people take care of
their shopping tasks is an important job to do in any smartphone,” he said.
“But that’s not what the phone is all about.” He added that it would be
“too simplistic” to call the phone simply a vehicle for selling Prime
memberships, though he conceded that Prime members would get a lot out of
this device.
贝佐斯驳斥了这种和亚马逊商店相连接的功能居心不良的说法。他说，“帮助人们打理
购物任务，是任何智能手机必备的一项重要功能。不过，这款手机不是只有这一项功能
。”他还表示，说这款手机只是销售Prime会员服务的工具未免“过于简单化”了，不
过他承认，Prime会员能从这款设备中获益良多。
The Fire has an innovative 3-D display that adds a sense of perspective to
some of its user-interface screens. The system also allows you to scroll or
browse through content by tiling the phone in certain ways. That feature
leans more toward the gimmicky than the useful, but not in an annoying way.
It does not slow down or otherwise interrupt how you use the device, but I’
m not sure that it will add much, either. On the other hand, it does look
pretty cool.
Fire手机拥有创新性的3D显示屏，这给它的一些用户界面屏幕增添了视角感。它的系统
还能让用户通过用某种方式倾斜手机，来滑动或翻阅手机内容。这项功能更倾向于是一
种噱头，却没有多大实用性，不过，它采取了并不惹人讨厌的方式。该功能不会放慢或
干扰你对手机的使用，不过，我同样不认为，它能增添多大好处。从另一方面说，这项
功能确实看起来很酷。
Amazon has included two features that are unusual and useful. One is Mayday,
Amazon’s live video customer service, which it began offering on its
Kindle Fire tablets last year. The feature lets you call up an instant, on-
screen video chat with a customer service representative at the push of a
button.
亚马逊还给这款手机添加了两项非比寻常的实用功能。第一项是Mayday，这是亚马逊提
供的在线视频客户服务，自去年起，亚马逊就开始在它旗下的Kindle Fire平板电脑上
提供这项服务了。只需按下一个按键，该功能就能让你即时在屏幕上呼叫一名客户服务
代表进行视频聊天。
Even the best, easiest-to-use smartphones can sometimes be vexing. How do
you connect your phone to both your work and personal calendar? How do you
get on your company’s VPN? What’s the best way to send your mother a dozen
full-resolution photos? Answering such questions for other phones involves
consulting confusing online instructions, calling an 800 number or driving
to a store. With Mayday, you just beckon for help; it’s immediate and
delightful.
即使是最棒、最好用的智能手机，有时候也会让人烦躁。怎样才能把公司的日历和个人
的日历，同时绑定到手机上？怎样才能连上公司的VPN？给妈妈发送十几张全分辨率的
照片，最好的办法是什么？对于其他手机，要解答这样的问题，需要查阅令人费解的在
线教程、拨打800电话，甚至开车跑到商店里。有了Mayday，只需要呼叫就能得到帮助
，不用等待，而且令人愉悦。
The other fantastic Fire phone feature: Every photo you snap on the phone is
backed up on Amazon’s servers free. There’s no limit to how many photos
are stored there. It’s a simple, headache-free backup system that I wish
every other phone manufacturer offered — Apple most urgently.
Fire手机上另一个很棒的特性是：手机上拍摄的每一张照片，都会免费备份到亚马逊的
服务器上。在网上储存的照片数量是无限的。我真希望每一家手机制造商都能提供这样
一种简单、不头疼的备份系统——苹果最最亟需。
And yet, despite these distinctions, Amazon’s phone suffers severe
shortcomings compared with similarly priced rivals. Its app store doesn’t
have anywhere near the number of third-party programs currently available on
the iPhone or Android devices. There are more than 200,000 apps in Amazon’
s store, but almost all are designed for the firm’s tablets. IOS and
Android have app stores approaching a million titles.
然而，尽管有这些出色的特性，但是亚马逊的手机与同等价位的竞品相比，还有一些严
重的不足。它应用商店里的品类，无论如何也赶不上iPhone或Android设备上可选的第
三方程序。亚马逊的商店里有超过20万种应用，但几乎全部是为该公司的平板电脑设计
的。而iOS和Android系统的应用商店里，有近100万种。
Because Amazon’s phone is based on a version of Google’s Android operating
system, it could be pretty simple for developers to transform some of their
Android phone apps into Amazon phone apps, but it’s impossible to predict
how many will do that.
由于亚马逊的手机是基于谷歌(Google)的Android操作系统的一个版本研发的，所以开
发人员将自己的Android应用转换为亚马逊手机的应用可能很容易，只是无法预测有多
少开发人员会这样做。
With a cheaper phone marketed at a broader audience, Amazon could have jump-
started that process. But a phone whose primary audience consists of Amazon
Prime members may not be that attractive to developers.
如果面向范围更大的消费者，推出一款较为廉价的手机，亚马逊或许就能推动版本转换
的过程。但是一台主要用户是亚马逊Prime会员的手机，对于开发者来说或许并没有那
么吸引人。
More challenging than the app shortage is the phone’s novel user interface.
While the Fire phone does look simple, it’s thoroughly new. People who are
used to iOS and Android will need to figure out new ways to get around this
device. That might not have been a problem if Amazon were aiming for a low-
end, late-adopter crowd. But most people who are looking at a phone at this
price are most likely already used to one major phone platform or another.
Amazon is asking them to learn something new, without much of a financial
benefit for doing so.
比缺少应用程序更大的挑战是，这款手机新颖的用户界面。尽管Fire手机看起来很简单
，但它完全是崭新的。已经习惯了iOS和Android的用户，需要琢磨琢磨才知道这台机器
要怎么玩。如果亚马逊的目标是低端、采用智能手机较晚的人群，这或许就不是一个问
题。但考虑这个价位的手机的用户，很有可能已经适应了这一种或那一种主流的智能手
机平台。亚马逊这是在要求他们学新东西，可是又没有给予多少经济上的回报。
It didn’t have to be this way. Amazon’s phone is making its debut at a
pivotal time in the business — when innovation in high-end smartphones
seems to have plateaued, with each new top phone just incrementally better
than the last. If expensive phones are now considered boring, customers
might well begin to wonder if they need to spend all that much. Amazon could
have offered a groundbreaking alternative — a great phone without whiz-
bang features, for a substantial discount.
其实，亚马逊并不是非要这样做不可。该公司的手机问世之时，手机业务也在经历转变
性的时期，高端智能手机的创新似乎已经停滞，新推出的每一款高端手机，与上一款相
比都只有增量的改进。如果现在昂贵的手机在消费者看来太乏味了，顾客或许就会开始
考虑，是不是需要花那么多钱。亚马逊或许可以推出一款开创性的替代产品：一款没有
酷炫功能但还是很棒的手机，价格再打一个大折扣。
How much cheaper? Consider this math. Amazon’s $200-with-contract price
implies a full sales price of about $650. You don’t see that price when you
sign up for service, but it will be built into your monthly bill. For
instance, if you get a 1 GB plan from AT&T with the new phone, you will pay
$82 a month — $50 a month for data service, plus an additional $32 a month
for Fire phone. The iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy sell for the same price.
要便宜多少呢？考虑一下这道数学题：亚马逊200美元的合约价意味着，全价约为650美
元。签订服务合约时，不需要付这个价格，但它其实已经包括在了每月的账单里。例如
，如果你从AT&T拿到这款手机时选择了1GB的套餐，就需要每月支付82美元——数据服
务本身价格是每月50美元，再加上Fire手机每月32美元的费用。与iPhone 5S和三星
Galaxy的售价相当。
If Amazon hadn’t added many of the more far-out features in the phone, it
might have been able to make the phone for $250. If it sold its device at
that price, then, your monthly bill would be $62.50 instead — $50 for data,
plus only $12.50 for the phone. That might have been truly groundbreaking.
如果亚马逊没有在这款手机里加入那么多超前的功能，或许就能以250美元的价格制造
这款手机。如果以这个价格出售，用户每月的账单就会是62.5美元——数据服务50美元
，手机的费用每月只有12.5美元。这样或许才称得上真正具有开创性。
Although he did not show the feature onstage, Mr. Bezos confirmed that his
expensive new phone does makes calls. “I haven’t made a phone call on my
phone in a long time,” he said. “But I know people still make phone calls.”
尽管贝佐斯没有在台上展示，但他确认，这款昂贵的新手机的确能打电话。“我很久没
有用我的手机打过电话了，”他说。“不过我知道，人们还在打电话。”
Email: f***********[email protected]; Twitter: @fmanjoo
Copyright © 2013 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.
Email: f***********[email protected]; Twitter: @fmanjoo
翻译：张薇、王童鹤
【在 z*******n 的大作中提到】
: Sdk:
: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-phone
: Dear Customers,
: We're excited to unveil our newest innovation—Fire, the first smartphone
: designed by Amazon.
: Fire is the only smartphone with Dynamic Perspective and Firefly, two new
: technologies that allow you to see and interact with your world through a
: whole new lens.
: Dynamic Perspective uses a custom-designed sensor system that responds to
: the way you hold, view, and move your phone. It opens up a new class of
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