Perhaps my consumer lifestyle strangely aligns Amazon's incentives with mine, but I'm actually really happy how they solved the problem of me buying more stuff from them. It seems that they observed very common patterns people already use poorly and streamlined them.

Case in point, almost everyone I know takes pictures of books and items they want to buy or investigate further later. Currently this 1) clutters my Photos app with this overloaded behavior and 2) additionally requires me to then manually re-enter the information/remember to look it up. Just having Amazon scan and put it on some list for me is killer in my opinion.

Additionally, I've wanted something like X-Ray for so long and it seems so obvious. Shazam style movie/tv show detection and bringing up IMDB and other useful info on my phone is great. Having Airplay style functionality built into Samsung TVs and play stations is also great (hopefully we will move to a standard protocol to stream video content to TVs in the near future, but this is a positive step in my opinion from just Apple TV in Apple land and just Amazon TV in Amazon land).

I think Mayday may just be the feature though. People like me will have no use for it, but its definitely the case that most people don't really know what they're doing at all with their devices. The threshold for "user friendly" is so laughable right now. iOS AND Android really are quite complex for any non-standard task ("What does it mean I've run out of iCloud space??"). And this is not easily implementable I think -- it will take serious investment to copy this feature on other platforms, you can't get away with a half-baked software solution.

Google Goggles was always able to look at pictures of all sorts of things and provide you with more information about them, including but not limited to UPC codes, books, etc. The rub lies in the fact that Google wouldn't actually sell those third part products but Amazon more than likely does.

I agree with you entirely on X-Ray. I don't have any Fire products personally but that's clearly a missing integration on the competing devices.

I agree about the mayday. One big reason why seniors buy the iphone is that there are classes in the apple store which help them learn to use the device and overcome their fear of tech.So mayday could work well here.

Also, many tech people hate coming home after work and doing tech support for their family. They could have a strong influence on their family members phone purchase decision.

Mayday is actually a killer feature on a phone for Grandma. With 24/7 on-device tech support, relatives would never have to field tech support requests.

But would Grandma really want a phone like this?

If the original (non-Fire) Kindle is any indication; no. I gave mine a pre-Paperwhite Kindle and she loved it. Then someone bought her a Kindle Fire ("If you like that you'll LOVE this. You can play games!"). She hated it and went back to the regular Kindle.

Turns out, if she wants to play games she'll grab a deck of cards.

You're questioning whether someone wants a phone without easily available support? I'd venture to say if anyone marketed a phone with a 'feature' like that, it wouldn't do well.

Or are you questioning whether a grandmother want's a smart phone? The answer is yes.

Unfortunately, there are grandma's who are practically forced to have a smartphone "since the family plan has data" and...they would probably like live support (I'm just saying they do exist).

Wonder how large the cross-section is of people that could use that feature versus people that could remember / figure-out how to initiate that feature.

or just design it to be easy to use, and teach Grandma how to use it, and then she has time to bake for you

Talk about losing your place -- I just want a phone that I can hand to someone when I'm showing a picture, and not have it exit the app or something when they inevitably touch the screen. Would be nice to have a touch screen lock gesture, which keeps the current app active and displayed.

Oh, and the 3D -- is that really a 3D screen, or does it just change the screen when you move the phone, based on the position of your face relative to the front camera?

Soft buttons drive me crazy. When I hand my Android phone to someone to help me take a picture, about half the time they inadvertently close the camera app.

You're not the only one. I'm very close to giving up and using an Android phone as my main phone, but I love physical buttons.

The most painful one is the camera button, it's the one killer feature of Nokia phones and Windows Phone.

(I have a Nokia N86 currently as my main phone).

2D that just redraws based on the position of your face relative to the 4 front cameras.

(Yes, there are 6 cameras total: high-res back, mid-res front, plus 4 low-res for face-tracking.)

How do you know that this phone has that problem? I would certainly hope that Amazon's engineers thought about those use cases... Until I read some reviews that actually find those problems with the phone, it's meaningless conjecture to believe them.

Amazon has consistently impressed me with their customer service, so Mayday struck me as a pretty awesome feature:

"Simply hit the Mayday button in quick actions and an Amazon expert will appear to help you via live video."

I suspect Mayday is targeted more at older users (e.g.; my parents and grandparents). Which is why it doesn't really appeal to me much since, as someone who works in technology, I'm less inclined to need it.

Still, you're right that Amazon offers great customer service so I'll give them props for Mayday.

Continuing on that train of thought, I'd guess the "Amazon experts" basically just know the UI pretty well, but they won't help much with questions the hackernews community might have.

they might not right now, but presumably all calls will be recorded for quality assurance purposes. they'll assemble a list of all questions people have, at all levels, and can improve at all levels as well.

Apple's essentially owned 'end to end' for a while - they design the chips and hardware, the physical retail stores, and handle customer support. The amount of info they have on problems people have and how to optimize for that must be huge. Amazon getting in on direct customer interaction for support will give them a similar, yet different, potential usability goldmine for years to come.

I agree with you that Amazon will probably feed back on the data they receive from Mayday, and I would also assume that Apple considers that data when it designs products and considers improvements. I hope that this means that the customer service will continue to increase in quality, but I think we are looking years in the future.

Who do your parents and grandparents go to for help with their phones? In my family everyone comes to me, so even as a fairly technical person this Mayday feature seems great. :-)

Great point! Mayday give me a reason to not do free tech support. :)

Mayday is cool. I had a kindle fire hd and the power button wouldn't work. The only way to get it to turn on was attach a power cord. I hit the mayday button, the rep talked with me briefly and then auto-ordered a replacement. I didn't have to turn on my computer, I didn't have to dig up a customer service number, I didn't have to sit waiting in a customer service chat (which is usually more like email with the amount of time between responses). Is saving me 10 minutes revolutionary? I'm not sure, but it sure was nice.

It feels almost exclusively like a device you carry around in your pocket to help you buy more shit from them. Regardless of the usefulness it just feels super slimy.

Here is your tangle-free: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_11?url=search-alias...

Go to town.