• Source:JND

The first smartphone that Amazon dropped was the Amazon Fire phone back in 2014, but that got discontinued just the year after. But it seems like the e-commerce giant is trying to step into this industry once again. This new supposed device could also support integration with Amazon's voice assistant, Alexa, and keep users in contact with Amazon's ecosystem. Amazon might be quietly working on a comeback in the smartphone space, but not in the way you’d expect. Instead of building just another app-heavy device, the company is reportedly exploring a phone that leans heavily on AI to handle most tasks.

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An AI-Enabled Smartphone From Amazon

According to a report from Reuters that cited four unnamed sources, the project is internally being called "Transformer" and is said to be built around Alexa, which could act as the main way users interact with the device. Rather than opening multiple apps, the idea is to let AI take over and manage things in the background, whether it’s shopping, booking services, or consuming content.

This effort is being led by a relatively new team within Amazon known as ZeroOne, headed by J Allard, a name associated with products like the Zune and Xbox from his Microsoft days. The overall direction also seems to draw inspiration from the Light Phone, suggesting a simpler, less cluttered experience.

Interestingly, the concept ties back to a much older idea from Jeff Bezos. He had once imagined a voice-first computing assistant, something similar to what’s shown in Star Trek, where users rely more on conversation than tapping through interfaces.

If this device actually launches, it could double down on Amazon’s ecosystem. Things like shopping, streaming on Prime Video, listening to Prime Music, or even ordering food via Grubhub could be handled more directly, without needing separate apps or logins. The goal seems to be reducing friction by letting AI stitch everything together.

That said, it’s still early days. There’s no confirmation around pricing or launch timelines, and like many experimental projects, this one could still be dropped if priorities shift.

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It’s also worth remembering that Amazon has tried this before. The Amazon Fire Phone, launched in 2014, didn’t really take off and was discontinued within a year. This time, though, the company appears to be betting on AI to rethink the entire smartphone experience instead of just competing on hardware. What is interesting to note here is the fact that Nothing's CEO Carl Pei only recently said that the mobile app ecosystem would be replaced by the agentic AI ecosystem and the need to manually pair apps for a task will be a thing of the past. This new smartphone by Amazon kind of looks like it's building upon the same idea.


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