Is Amazon developing a 3-D 'Kindle Phone'?

Amazon is developing a handset – possibly called the Kindle Phone – with a next-generation holographic display. 

That's the word today from the Wall Street Journal, which sources its report to "people familiar with the company's plans."

According to the Journal, this Amazon smart phone, like the Nintendo 3DS, would not require special glasses to use. Instead, a retina-tracker would follow the movement of the user's eyeballs, and render images on the display as "three-dimensional at all angles." 

Amazon isn't commenting on the rumors. But it does make sense that the company would want to get into the smart-phone game. After all, the Kindle Fire line of tablets, which undercuts the more advanced Apple iPad on price, has proven pretty successful. With that kind of hardware experience, why not dip a toe in the (3-D) smart-phone market? 

Not that everyone is thrilled about the idea. In a wonderfully contrarian post over at Wired.com, blogger Roberto Baldwin details the many, many things wrong with a holographic smartphone. Among them: the technology isn't yet good enough to produce something that isn't "cheesy"; app developers would go out of their minds trying to create a bunch of stereoscopic-capable software; and privacy would go straight out the window. 

"You might not want your bank statement floating above your phone," Baldwin writes. "Sure, the chances are slim that someone will be looking at your phone at the same focal angle as you while you look at your phone. But anything that pulls critical data off of a two-dimensional screen and creates a 3D image of it sounds like a bad idea. Oh look, you just got a text from your significant other and now your cube-mate knows about your love life in glorious 3D." 

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