Amazon Fire phone is the only smartphone with Dynamic Perspective and Firefly. Dynamic Perspective is an entirely new sensor system that responds to the way a customer holds, views and moves the phone. The Dynamic Perspective SDK gives developers access to algorithms that identify the X, Y and Z coordinates of the head, enabling a whole new class of apps and games. Firefly quickly recognizes things in the real world—web and email addresses, phone numbers, QR and bar codes, movies, music, and millions of products, and lets the user take action in seconds—all with the simple press of the Firefly button. With the Firefly SDK, developers can extend the use of the Firefly button to enable new actions their users can take based on what they identify.

Here is a recap of helpful Fire phone posts on the Amazon Apps & Services Blog in 2014:

Add Beautiful 3D Maps to Your Fire Tablet and Fire Phone Apps with the Amazon Maps API V2

We announced a new version of the Amazon Maps API, offering an even richer customer experience with 3D vector maps, 3D landmarks, drawing API’s, fragments, multiple maps, and more.
 

re:Invent Slides and Videos Now Live

Each November, Amazon holds the re:Invent developer conference and this year there were several sessions designed for mobile developers and the Fire phone. The slides and videos are now live so if you weren’t able to make it to the conference you can still get the content right here.
 

Free Video Training – Everything You Need to Know about Building Apps for the Fire Phone

Recorded live at AWS re:Invent 2014 this free video will introduce you to Fire the first phone designed by Amazon. You will learn about the new customer experiences it enables and how top developers have updated their Android apps to take advantage of Fire phone.
 

Reach New Android Customers with Xamarin Studio, C# and Amazon Fire Devices

We shared a free Xamarin Evolve video that covers how quickly and easily you can target Amazon devices, including Fire phone, using C# and Xamarin Studio.

AWS Mobile Services Helps Mobile Developers Build Great Experiences across Devices and Platforms

We shared an overview of the AWS Mobile SDK and how to get started. The AWS Mobile SDK helps bring the power of the cloud to your apps while enabling you to build high quality mobile apps quickly and easily across multiple platforms including iOS, Android and Fire OS. 

Handygames: Creating Unique Gaming Experiences with Fire Phone and Fire TV

We chatted with HandyGames about customer reactions to the new experiences they’ve built using Fire phone and Fire TV.

HTML5 Packaged Apps Services Makes It Even Easier to Submit Apps

 We announced new support for web apps submission to the Amazon Appstore giving you the option to submit self-contained, packaged web apps that run on Amazon devices including Fire TV and Fire phone.  You can now submit your web app as a standard zipfile in addition to the existing hosted web app solution or have web apps in the Amazon Appstore that use both.

Adding Dynamic Perspective to Your HTML5 Games Tutorial

We walked through the process of adding Fire phone Dynamic Perspective to a Phaser based HTML5 game.
 

Adding Dynamic Perspective to Your Unity Games

We walked through how to quickly add Dynamic Perspective to your existing Unity game.

Top 10 Tips for Optimizing Your Android Apps for Fire Phone

Have an Android app already but not sure where to start with Fire phone?  We offer plenty of tips and tricks to get your app quickly up and running on Fire phone and how take advantage of its new capabilities.

90 Seconds to Find out If Your App Is Ready for the Fire Phone

We covered testing your Fire phone app with our free App Testing Service.

Extend Amazon Fire’s Home Carousel: Make a Great First Impression

We covered Fire phone’s new enhanced home carousel and how you can expose content from your app directly on the home screen.

Firefly: Connecting Your Apps to the Physical World

We posted examples of how developers are taking advantage of Fire’s new Firefly capabilities.

Amazon Fire: Design Best Practices for Dynamic Perspective

We covered some of the design principles behind the Fire UX and what you need to know to design the best customer experience possible.
 

Announcing the Amazon Fire Phone: App and Game Experiences Never before Possible

We unveiled Fire, the first phone designed by Amazon.  Fire is the first and only smartphone with Dynamic Perspective and Firefly. With Fire Develop SDKs available now, these new technologies enable you to create more immersive experiences in your apps and games that increase user engagement.

For more information about getting started with Fire phone, check out the following additional assets:

• Amazon Fire Phone
• Amazon Fire Phone SDK
• Getting Started Developing Apps for Fire Phone
• What's New in the Fire Phone SDK

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Nextpeer provides a platform to add multiplayer support to your games. It supports the asynchronous and synchronous game play modes you’d expect, peer to peer messaging and, my favorite, it has the ability to let players compete against previously recorded sessions – perfect for a quick, simple, engaging experience.

Over the past few months, we’ve been talking a lot about how to build great customer experiences with high engagement to increase retention and monetization.  We’ve discussed new capabilities and tools and how apps like Soundtracker, the Sandbox and edjing have seen the benefits. In this video, the team at Nextpeer will walk you through a demo and the steps that 2048 and other games have taken to add multiplayer support to improve their overall experience, engagement and retention.