Amazon smartphone photos leaked, as online retail giant appears to inch closer to release date

The much talked about possibility of an Amazon smartphone appears to have moved closer to reality with photos being leaked of the apparent phone.

Tech news website BGR has claimed it obtained the first “unobscured” image of the online retail giant’s first foray into the smartphone hardware market.

BGR confidently backs its claim to the authenticity of the photos: “Multiple trusted sources have verified the authenticity of the image, which was created for internal use by graphic designers at Amazon.”

The Amazon smartphone has been mooted for a couple of years now, with strong indications over the past month that the phone could be launched as early as next month, as SmartCompany reported last month.

The reports from last month said the phone had been demonstrated to a select group of developers at a top secret meeting in San Francisco, with a key feature of the new device said to be a 3D screen that doesn’t require special glasses, a feature the company hopes will differentiate its device from competitors, including Apple and Samsung.

Analysts say the move by the online retail giant to produce its own smartphone would enable it to further complement the success of its Kindle devices and give potential users another hardware platform from which to use and access Amazon’s vast store of digital media products.