The latest Amazon smartphone rumor has the yet-to-be-announced phone packing a sophisticated 3D holographic screen. This is a very dumb idea. The last place you want images floating in space is your smartphone.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon is working on a retina-tracking phone that produces 3D images. Those images would float above the display, allowing you to relive your Star Wars fantasy of saving Princess Leia. It sounds great on paper, but in reality, it'll be an eye-straining, privacy-losing train wreck that will have you tilting your phone this way and that trying to make those images look just right.
We've been hearing rumors of an Amazon phone for nearly a year. Maybe it'll be called the Kindle Phone. Or the Kindle Talk. Or how about the Kindle Torch. Whatever the name there's a good chance it'll include the word "Kindle" and some way for you to effortless buy books and socks and emergency stoves from the online retailer. That's all well and good. But why on earth would the Kindle (insert name here) that Amazon's super-secret Lab126 is (allegedly) developing have glasses-free 3D display?
Maybe Mr. Bezos believes you'll be more inclined to buy the complete run of The Wire if holographic tech puts it RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. Whatever the reason Amazon has used to justify pursuing this folly, it needs to stop. Now. If we've learned anything watching the TV market, it's this: No one cares about 3D.
The first problem for Operation Hologram is there's no way it won't look completely cheesy. If they couldn't make Tupac to look good at Coachella, there's no way in hell they'll make him look good on your phone. Doubt our word? Take a look at the glasses-free 3D screen on the Nintendo 3DS. It's the worst reading environment ever after reading in total darkness. If you're into headaches, fuzzy images, and being let down by technology, you're going to love a smartphone that pushes 3D to your already display-weary eyes.
Even if the 3D technology is there (it's not), the Samsung Galaxy S4 has shown that current eye tracking tech sucks. Having it kinda, sorta work doesn't cut it for scrolling pages. Imagine the ocular armageddon of trying to get a pair of images to line up just right while you're walking down the street checking your email or playing Candy Crush Saga.
Of course, all this extra displaying and tracking will decimate battery life. Smartphones barely make it through the day as it is, and only if you turn down the display, turn off Bluetooth and never-ever open YouTube and get sucked down the cats-on-a-Roomba rabbit hole. A smartphone with a 3D display should last about three hours.
And then there's the whole matter of apps. Developers would have to create stereoscopic-ready apps. The Android ecosystem already suffers from fragmentation. Now these developers will have to develop for another screen on a forked version of Android for an Amazon phone. That's a tough sell to developer already having to decide which version of Android to support to make the money back they borrowed from their friends to create the ultimate photo-sharing app. "For utility apps and 2D games, it would be a huge pain in the ass and pretty questionable," says app developer Phil Ryu.
And finally, there's privacy. You might not want your bank statement floating above your phone. Sure, the chances are slim that someone will be looking at your phone at the same focal angle as you while you look at your phone. But, anything that pulls critical data off of a two-dimensional screen and creates a 3D image of it sounds like a bad idea. Oh look, you just got a text from your significant other and now your cube-mate knows about your love life in glorious 3D.
Maybe Amazon has some sort of super-amazing eye tracking system that'll blow us all away. Maybe someone at Amazon is just researching 3D holographic images for a device that won't eat through a battery in a few hours because it's running advanced eye tracking software and pushing autostereoscopy images. And like all rumors, maybe Amazon is just goofing around and someone took it a bit too seriously.
Some rumors seem too good to be true. This one seems too bad to be true.
