As for sound, the Fire touts dual stereo speakers along with support for virtual Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. It comes with earphones with tangle-free, flat cables plus magnetic earbuds that clasp together. As you might expect, there are a boatload of entertainment-centric features too. There's X-Ray on the phone for second-screen functionality, ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction) support and the ability to fling videos to Miracast devices (like, you know, that Fire TV). Obviously it also supports all of the Prime offerings like Music and Video, plus you'll get Audible, the Kindle Newsstand and Comixology as well.

Stating how it's difficult to use phones these days, CEO Jeff Bezos also announced that Mayday would be coming to the Fire . That's the 24/7, 365-days-a-year live customer service support that the Kindle Fire has as well. Bezos said that Mayday will take less than 15 seconds to answer and will work over 3G/4G as well as WiFi. And, most importantly, it's free.

Here's something new: The Fire will also ship with something called Firefly. It's a feature that uses the phone's camera to recognize books, DVDs, phone numbers, QR codes, CDs, URLs, games, bar codes and more. It also uses the phone's microphone to listen to songs. If it detects an item, you can quickly tap a button to purchase it from Amazon. Firefly can also recognize art. It pulled up a Wikipedia entry for Cornflowers by Sergei Osipov, as well as Man with Red Hat by Vittore Carpaccio. Indeed, it recognizes over a hundred million items, including street signs. It's such a key service to the Fire that there'll even be a dedicated Firefly button.

Saving the best for last, Bezos also announced that the Fire would indeed have a 3D interface. But unlike other 3D phones, that 3D interface will follow you around thanks to Fire's unique head-tracking system that he calls Dynamic Perspective. It uses four cameras to do so, each with a 120-degree field of view and infrared light. They also use a global shutter instead of a rolling shutter.

In a demo on stage, he showed that it changes a picture's view as you move around. You can tilt the phone around and peek underneath blockages on maps, or go forward and backward in a slideshow. It also works in a web browser, à la Smart Scroll on Samsung phones. A small tilt will let it scroll slowly; a larger one will have it scroll faster. The same mechanic also applies to e-books. You can play games by tilting the phone around too.

The Fire runs on Fire OS 3.5, an Android-based operating system that's customized for Amazon. You can either choose to have a carousel-style app grid similar to the Kindle tablets, or a more Android-like look. The carousel version is slightly enhanced from the tablet version -- you'll be able to see the first few emails without having to launch the mail app, and the latest pictures of the camera app. The Music app has a three-panel design that consists of navigation on the left, album art and controls in the middle and lyrics on the right.

Pre-orders start today, and if you hurry, you can take advantage of a limited time introductory offer that includes a year of Prime for free. The Fire will ship on July 25th of this year.