More than a decade after launching and quickly cancelling its first smartphone, Amazon is reportedly working on a new phone.
According to a new report from Reuters, several people familiar with the initiative say Amazon is developing a new phone that’s code-named “Transformer.” But it’s unclear if or when you’ll actually be able to buy a new Amazon-branded smartphone.
The company’s first phone was called the Fire Phone, and it ran a modified version of Android called Fire OS that was similar to the software that runs on Amazon’s Fire tablets and Fire TV streaming devices.
But Amazon while the company positions its tablets and media streamers as devices for interacting with Amazon apps and services like Amazon Shopping, Prime Video, Prime Music, and Kindle, Amazon officials knew that people generally expect to use phones for more than shopping and streaming media. So the company tried to come up with something to help set its phones apart… and settled on a wonky 3D effect that that was supposed to make games and other content look like they were popping out of the screen.
The Fire Phone was widely panned by reviewers and Amazon didn’t sell very many, even after slashing prices. It was discontinued within a year.
This time around, Reuters reports that Amazon is hoping to emphasize AI features by putting the Alexa voice assistant software front and center and giving people a way to interact with Amazon’s AI software throughout the day and not only when they’re within range of a smart speaker.
But you can already install Amazon’s Alexa app on most existing phones and tablets. So it’s unclear whether that would really be a distinguishing feature for these phones. And Alexa itself may also be less of a selling point in 2026 than it was a decade ago when there was less competition. These days users can pick from a number of AI assistants including ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, Apple Intelligence and Siri, and more.
Reuters…