At this point, we’re damn near certain that Amazon’s big June 18 announcement will be its first foray into the (3D?) smartphone market. But now, thanks to a report from TechCrunch, it looks like the four front-mounted IR cameras will be powered by Omron’s Okao Vision’s face-tracking face-tracking technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2DNMABNsf0
Amazon’s teaser video certainly seems to imply that the phone responds directly to a user’s movements, and according to TechCrunch, tilting your head to either the left or right will give you access to the phone’s hidden side panels. So where does all this 3D talk come in? The four front-facing cameras mean that Okao’s face-detecting software can get X, Y, and Z coordinates, which works with the phone’s gyro sensor and accelerometer to create a glasses-less 3D effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erUZQ9GK0sE
While that all holds potential to be a neat trick in its own right, the really interesting part will come when third-party developers get their hands on Amazon’s hardware. [Tech Crunch]
