Definition: Fire phone

An early Android smartphone from Amazon that never took off. Debuting in mid-2014, the Fire was no longer available a year later, although refurbished units were found from third parties.

A physical Firefly button scanned book covers, album covers, QR barcodes and works of art and delivered information about the objects and their availability on Amazon.com. Firefly could identify music, movies and TV shows and offer up the item for purchase. For novices, Mayday delivered video chat tech support.

Also included was unlimited Amazon cloud storage for photos. The phone could be autoscrolled by tilting it, and flipping the device rendered an auxiliary screen with more menus and functions for the app in use. Like Fire tablets, apps came from Amazon's app store (see Fire tablet).

3D Dynamic Perspective

The Fire's four front-facing cameras created a 3D perspective as the phone was angled. In this maps app example, the building seems to pop out of the screen. (Image courtesy of Amazon.com.)