Amazon's unique 3D smartphone likely to be announced on June 18

Amazon just revealed that it’ll host a launch event later this month, on June 18. The company doesn’t say exactly what it’s going to unveil then, but the event’s teaser webpage and teaser video strongly suggest that it will announce its very first smartphone (we can even see the phone at 0:40 in the video).

The teaser video shows different people reacting to what we believe to be Amazon’s smartphone - which, as previously noted, should come with a 3D UI and unique tilt-based gestures. As seen in the video (embedded below), people are quite amazed by what Amazon is showing them, mentioning that they’ve never seen anything like that, or that it’s “very real life”, and “it moved with me” (presumably talking about the handset’s UI). Moreover, one more hint for the upcoming tilt and gesutre-based interface is right in the invitations for the event: Amazon specifically calls out developers who have experience in developing apps with gyroscope and accelerometer-focus. It even asks if they have interest in exploring a totally "novel" sensor, so we can definitely expect something very new in two weeks.

Apart from the novel UI, the Amazon smartphone is expected to offer mid-range features, likely in order to keep costs down: a 4.7-inch 720p display, quad-core Snapdragon processor (unknown model), 2GB of RAM, and a 13MP rear camera. Like Amazon's Kindle Fire slates, the upcoming handset may run a modified version of Android. We assume that the smartphone will be available only in the US, though that remains to be seen. Previous rumors correctly pointed out that the phone would be unveiled by the end of June, with a wide Stateside launch expected for September.