We all know that Amazon has a very bad track record of smartphones. The company introduced Amazon Fire phone but had to discontinue the Fire phone in 2015.
Now the company is planning to re-enter into the smartphone world. This time the company will be entering into the market with ‘Ice’ branded smartphone. Amazon Fire phone was unsuccessful because of the hefty price tag and underrated performance. Fire phone was limited to few Western markets only. So unlike the Fire phone, this time Amazon is trying to start by entering into emerging markets like India. The ‘ICE’ branded smartphones from Amazon will come with Google and Play services built in. It will come with Google Mobile Services (GMS) including all the major Google apps.
The company plans to launch at least one smartphone in India within this year (2017). There will be few other smartphones upcoming in future. Two devices are already in testing as per the latest information, one with 5.2-inch display and another with 5.5-inch display. The vase variant will comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. This will obviously will have a micro SD card slot for further storage expansion. The smartphone will come with 13MP of main camera. Other features include an Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 chipset which is also being used in Xiaomi Redmi 4. The smartphone will come with Android Nougat 7.1.q out of the box with Google Assistant built in.
Leaked specifications of Ice phone:
- 5.2-inch / 5.5-inch display
- 2GB of RAM
- 16GB of internal storage
- Micro SD card slot
- 1.4GHz Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 SoC
- 13MP of main camera
- Android Nougat 7.1.1
- Google Assistant
- 4G VoLTE, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS
Price & release date:
The Ice branded smartphones from Amazon are expected to be officially unveiled before end of this year. The base variant of Ice smartphone will retail at Rs.6000($97) in India.
