Amazon is one of those few IT giants that wants to challenge the maestros of the conventional tech space by bringing out innovative products. The Amazon Echo was a breakthrough product that led Google and Apple to follow up with their iterations of the same. Their Prime Video service is also doing great as compared to rival services by Google and others. However, they couldn’t exactly set ‘fire’ in the smartphone arena with its Firefox series of phones. Now though, they are getting ready to beat the leaders at their own game with ‘Ice’ smartphones.
According to a report from Gadgets360, Amazon is working on a new line-up of smartphones branded as ‘Ice’, according to anonymous sources. The phones will be based on the latest Android OS and will feature support for Google Mobile Services, apart from running Amazon’s suite of apps and services. This is a major departure from the Android tablets that Amazon sells without Google apps on them.
The sources also say that the phones could feature 5.2-inch and 5.5-inch displays. They would come with entry-level specifications – Snapdragon 435, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, Android 7.1 and will offer Google Assistant as well. The devices could start around Rs 6,000 and could be in the markets within a year. However, no hints of Alexa on these phones has been speculated yet.
If this speculation turns out to be true, then we could be looking at a well-armed contender in the budget smartphone category ruled by the Android platform. The initial Fire phone ran the FireFox OS without Google apps, which was a deal-breaker for many. The ‘Ice’ phones running Android could have a fair chance of surviving in a market dominated by Google’s open-source OS.
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