Amazon is developing a new smartphone codenamed “Transformer” nearly 11 years after ditching its Fire Phone, according to Reuters sources. The phone is being developed by a year-old group within Amazon’s devices unit called ZeroOne, which is tasked with creating “breakthrough” gadgets, and is designed to sync with Alexa and serve as portal to Amazon’s digital services including its marketplace, Prime Video, Prime Music, and partners like Grubhub. (Technically, so are all existing phones, right?)
Amazon originally launched the Fire Phone in 2014, but it wasn’t a great device. Fire used a proprietary operating system called Fire OS that, despite being an Android fork, lacked availability to popular apps found on Android. It also had a complex multi-camera screen system that drained users’ batteries. Despite offering a free year of Amazon Prime with purchase and eventually dropping the price from $649 to $159, the phone didn’t sell well, and Amazon cancelled the project after just 14 months, taking a $170M hit on unsold inventory.
The billion dollar question — will Transformer run on “true” Android?
Sources say that Alexa would be a core feature of the phone, but not necessarily serve as its primary interface, which realistically leaves Android as its likely operating system. But will it be a “true” Android operating system, like the kind that runs on Samsung or Google devices, or a forked version, like what ran on the original Fire Phone and currently runs on Amazon’s Fire tablets today?
I’ve long said that the mobile operating system ecosystem needs a major third player to bring true competition to the space that’s dominated by Android and iOS, but initial reporting doesn’t make it sound like Transformer is going to bring that to the table. It sounds like it’s just going to be another lackluster device designed to shove Alexa and other Amazon products down your throat.
The real move would be if Amazon went balls to the wall on its new device and treated it as a loss leader — bringing specs that rival the iPhone 17 Pro Max, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, and Google Pixel 10 Pro at a $599 price point. Amazon would make it a no brainer for consumers to put a device in their hands each day that integrated with the rest of their hardware and software stack including Alexa+, its Ring camera and security systems, and Echo devices.
However I highly doubt that’ll be the case. We’ll likely end up with the equivalent of a Samsung Galaxy A26 loaded with preinstalled Amazon apps.
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