Is Amazon making a smartphone? A Reuters document from earlier this 365 days published facts about a instrument codenamed Transformer beneath construction, with Amazon’s Alexa+ AI assistant as the focus of the journey.
With Amazon asserting a entire rebrand of its tablet line on Thursday—killing the low-fee Fire Tablets and replacing them with top rate Alexa Tablets that at last drag Android with receive admission to to the Google Play Retailer—we maintain a blueprint for what an Android-powered Amazon mobile telephone could well well furthermore peek admire.
Amazon’s souped-up Alexa+ assistant is front and center on the pills. There’s a power “Are anticipating Alexa” widget on the house display shroud that enables you to call on the assistant to ask it questions—it’s doubtless you’ll perchance well instruct “Alexa” to situation off it, too. But Alexa+ now at last has what Amazon calls On-Display shroud Intelligence. Address Google’s Gemini on Android telephones or Apple’s Siri on iPhones, which will learn your display shroud and respond contextual questions, Alexa now has the identical functionality (whilst you choose in).
The Are anticipating Alexa widget is available in the corner of the Alexa Tablet.
Characterize: Julian Chokkattu
That could well well furthermore merely even be for easy issues admire summarizing a web sites, but it could perchance possibly perchance well furthermore merely even be feeble for extra advanced responsibilities. Staring at a YouTube video about a brand glossy product? Are anticipating Alexa whether the product is on Amazon, and if so, add it to your Amazon purchasing cart. Perusing an Infatuation article about glossy restaurants on your web instruct? Are anticipating Alexa to highlight the ones closest to your dwelling of enterprise.
Alexa also supports “dwell sessions,” correct admire Gemini Are living or ChatGPT’s Negate Mode—it enables you to maintain a free-receive serve-and-forth conversation with the assistant. Maybe you are enthusiastic in a DIY mission and wish Alexa to spell out instructions slowly at your hang tempo. It also supports visual intelligence: Level the tablet’s camera at anything else, and Alexa can establish the object and offer functional advice. Received a water leak? Level the camera and ask Alexa how to repair it.
These are entirely glossy experiences for Alexa. Amazon’s vp of devices, Kevin Keith, tells WIRED the firm “did not in actuality maintain the most though-provoking product so as to make exercise of” these capabilities, but that’s now solved with its Android pills.
But these positive aspects would fit excellent in on a smartphone, the keep they’d possibly be worthy extra precious. When I mentioned this to Keith, he laughed and acknowledged: “We now maintain got nothing to portion on that. Attention-grabbing concept.”
Amazon notoriously tried to make a smartphone in 2014—the Fire Phone—a huge flop discontinued almost right this moment after birth attributable to a restricted app ecosystem, imperfect sales, and an over-reliance on gimmicky positive aspects. (Even its dressmaker honest no longer too long ago acknowledged he was as soon as embarrassed by it.) That could well well furthermore merely partly be why Amazon is retiring the “Fire” branding and killing its budget pills. Other folks could well well furthermore merely neglect the catastrophe and will not be reminded of the “Fire Phone” title when the firm in the end introduces a brand glossy handset.
Alexa+ now positive aspects On-Display shroud Intelligence, allowing the assistant to learn the display shroud to absorb context.
Characterize: Julian Chokkattu
Switching its pills over to Google’s Android (in settle on to the forked model the Fire pills ran) and adding the Google Play Retailer is a restful admission that or no longer it’s exhausting to thrive without a healthy app ecosystem. It also sets the mobile telephone up for success, as it will not in actuality feel app-restricted out of the gate admire the real Fire Phone.
Alexa+ is good now a paid carrier that requires an Alexa+ subscription or Amazon Prime. Alternatively, Amazon says anyone with its glossy Alexa tablet gets Alexa+ free of fee, and this could occasionally likely even be the case with an Amazon mobile telephone. Amazon’s devices, finally, are autos feeble to power customers to buy stuff on Amazon.com. A 2022 Pew Research Center survey confirmed that 76 p.c of Americans buy merchandise the exercise of a smartphone. It is some distance luminous that Amazon would want extra command motivate an eye on over the hardware of us exercise to make these purchases, namely if it paints Alexa as a functional assistant that can store for you.
Currently, Amazon has been on a mission to make its hardware extra top rate. This crusade appears to maintain ramped up after Microsoft Surface creator Panos Panay joined the firm as head of Devices & Companies and products in 2023. These upscaling efforts embody the slew of Echo speakers it launched in 2025, which saw marked worth will enhance over their predecessors attributable to upgraded hardware. The Kindles launched in the beginning of October now draw in graceful aluminum variants and are thinner and lighter than ever. Basically the most up-to-the-minute Alexa Tablets are extra great, manufactured from aluminum, and in actuality feel very iPad-esque.
Amazon hardware chief Panos Panay at a birth occasion in the fall of 2025.
Characterize: Julian Chokkattu
Panay spent his supreme few years at Microsoft on the failed Microsoft Duo folding smartphone. When it launched, he was as soon as adamant it wasn’t a mobile telephone but comparatively a productiveness-focused instrument that belonged in a brand glossy category.
The Reuters document suggests Amazon’s mobile telephone could well well furthermore merely feature an “AI interface,” what the industry customarily refers to as a generative particular person interface, that eliminates the necessity for former app shops. It will be that as soon as Panay in the end steps on a stage to display shroud an Amazon “Alexa” Phone, he’ll as soon as extra converse or no longer it’s no longer a mobile telephone, but a functional AI assistant on your pocket that conforms to your demands—marking a clear departure from each and every various Android slab in the marketplace.
The smartphone market is in comparatively of a quandary excellent now. Devices are getting extra expensive on story of the reminiscence disaster, shipments maintain declined for plenty of quarters in a row, and the duopoly in the US market between Samsung and Apple makes it exhausting for various avid gamers to ruin by. Established smartphone companies maintain given up and left the market, admire OnePlus this summer season or HMD last 365 days.
There’s no longer worthy need left in for American investors. Alternatively, an Amazon mobile telephone, made by a firm that’s no longer basically based mostly in China and backed by Amazon’s retail dominance, could well well furthermore swiftly swallow the prick of the pie Motorola and Google are fighting over.
