14 DAY TRIAL // Online retail giant Amazon tackled device making with its Kindle family of eReaders and tablets, which were a big success. Then Amazon got greedy and wanted to take up smartphone making.
Thus, the “revolutionary” 3D-capable Fire Phone was born, a device that was initially supposed to compete with high-end devices like the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy. But customers weren’t really impressed with it.
At some point, it was revealed that Amazon still had $83 / €75 million worth of unsold units, and since then, the company has been trying to sell units at whatever cost, including avidly axing the initial premium price tag.
Still, Amazon doesn’t seem to have taken the failure to heart, as a recent patent seems to indicate (as spotted at Mental Floss).
Amazon planning a new phone?
Is Amazon still trying to make it in the world of smartphones? Quite possibly. According to the unearthed documents, the retail giant might be planning another atypical smartphone that will take advantage of ear recognition technology. Yes, you read that right.
Apparently, this setup would be able to identify a user based on just ear shape, as seen through the phone’s frontal-facing camera.
The patent describes how the system might be able to tell whether the user is holding the phone to the left or right ear. The phone could be able to adjust its functionality based on how the user is holding the phone when making a call or listening to an audio file, which entails that the tech could be used to adjust the volume based on position.
Using ears to unlock devices might not be such a bad idea, given the fact ear shape tends to stay the same throughout life and each ear is unique to its possessor, pretty much like fingerprints.
While fingerprint scanners are pretty easy to use, at times, they can prove to be quite unreliable. On the other hand, fingerprint sensors will probably be yesterday’s news soon as the mobile industry is moving towards iris scanners instead.
Well, who is to say that Amazon won’t be paving the way for the future of mobile security with their ear unlocking mobile phone system?
