Amazon entered the smartphone business Wednesday — and made a big splash doing it.

At an event in Seattle, the retail giant unveiled the Fire Phone, a high-end, 3-D smartphone. It is the first smartphone Amazon has produced on its own.

“Can we build a better phone for our most engaged customers?” asked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the event. “Can we build a better phone for Amazon Prime members? Well, I’m excited to tell you that the answer is yes.”

Display: The Fire Phone has a 3-D, 4.7-inch high-definition display. It uses infrared lights and cameras mounted on the phone’s surface to track a user’s head movements and render images accordingly.

Bezos compared the Fire Phone’s 3-D feature to the introduction of geometric perspective and the vanishing point in 14th century artworks.

“We’re thinking maybe we can improve on that a little,” he said, noting that the company began working on the dynamic perspective feature four years ago.

Bezos demonstrated the Fire Phone’s dynamic perspective feature on a 3-D map of a nearby area in Seattle. Titling the phone to the side while looking at map offered additional information — including search results for nearby restaurants. He then tilted the phone for Yelp reviews. When looking at products online, Bezos tilted the phone side to side to scroll.

When reading news articles or books, you can tilt the phone to scroll.

“There’s a better way to scroll on this phone because of the dynamic perspective…. It’s a very natural, easy, one-handed gesture,” Bezos said. “I think you can probably imagine what the dynamic perspective technology can enable for gamers.”

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SOURCE: James O’Toole 
CNN Money