Amazon may be preparing to take another shot at the smartphone market, and this time the company seems to be leaning much harder into Alexa and always-on AI services. According to a Reuters report cited by IT Home, the internal codename for the project is Transformer.
That alone makes this one worth watching, because Amazon already tried and failed once with the Fire Phone back in 2014. That device was supposed to give the company a direct challenge to Apple and Samsung, but it flopped badly and was shut down not long after launch.
The new report says Amazon is now developing another Amazon smartphone in coordination with its devices and services teams. People familiar with the project claim the phone would stay closely tied to Alexa and keep a persistent connection with users throughout the day, which suggests Amazon is aiming for a much more assistant-first experience than before.
Reuters also says the effort fits a long-running vision tied to Jeff Bezos: bringing something closer to a science-fiction style voice assistant into everyday life. The idea reportedly includes a phone built around shopping, Prime benefits, delivery perks, and access to a user’s purchase history and content preferences, all wrapped into Amazon’s ecosystem.
At the same time, there are still a lot of unknowns. The report does not spell out pricing, expected sales targets, or how much Amazon is willing to invest. It also notes that the project could still be canceled if strategy changes or financial pressure increases, so this is far from a guaranteed launch.
One of the more interesting claims is that the device could rely so heavily on AI hardware and assistant-driven workflows that it might reduce the need for a traditional app store model. In theory, that could let users complete tasks without downloading or signing up for as many standalone apps.
Still, that approach comes with obvious risks. The recent wave of AI-first devices hasn’t exactly gone smoothly. Products like Humane’s AI Pin and Rabbit’s R1 both pitched a future where AI would replace more traditional devices or apps, but neither landed especially well with the public.
So for now, this rumored phone sounds more like an ambitious experiment than a sure thing. Even so, the idea of Amazon returning to phones with Alexa, shopping services, and deeper AI integration makes the project more interesting than a simple Fire Phone reboot.
