Amazon today unveiled Amazon Glow, a new interactive gadget geared at families that allow children to make video calls to family members and other distant loved ones. While Amazon Glow is a rival to Facebook’s Portal devices, which are also primarily geared at connecting families through video, it stands out by offering more than simply another connected screen experience.
It also makes use of technology to create an interactive, projected area in front of the device that serves as a platform for virtual activities like games, painting, puzzles, and more, giving the impression of being in person. Amazon Glow does this by combining immersive projection, sensor technologies, and video into one device. The Glow, unlike other smart displays on the market, does not resemble a small TV.
Instead, the tablet’s 8-inch display stands vertically, and a projector generates a 19-inch touch-sensitive surface in front of it for playing virtual games and other activities with faraway family members using their own tablets. This game is played on a specific mat that comes with the gadget as well. Kids and their loved ones may play games like Chess, Checkers, Go Fish, and Memory Match with Amazon Glow. They may read together from a library of thousands of children’s books or create with digital pencils, crayons, brushes, or spray paint, among other things. The goal is to make the distant, digital gaming seem more like what you would get if you were in the same room as the other person.
The Amazon Glow is also capable of combining physical and digital activity. It may, for example, scan a child’s favorite toy and convert it into a bespoke jigsaw puzzle by projecting the digital scan onto a flat surface in front of the device. The youngster then uses their hand to shatter the digital scan into pieces, transforming it into a puzzle. Alternatively, kids can scan a drawing they produced on paper and then digitally draw on the scanned version to create new artwork with the aid of a family member.
It also comes with “Glow Bits,” which are real things that are meant to function with the new gadget. The Tangram puzzle game is the first Glow Bits kit, in which the youngster utilizes the puzzle bits to solve obstacles while a distant family member uses digital puzzle forms on their tablet screen to play along.
Glow will support special activities from characters such as Anna and Elsa from “Frozen,” Woody and Buzz from Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story,” characters from Mattel’s Barbie and Hot Wheels, Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer, Elmo, Zoe, and others from “Sesame Street,” and others when it launches. The gadget is primarily intended for families that want to communicate with people from a distance. This might be useful in households where one parent frequently travels; grandparents reside far away, and so forth. It might also be useful during the current epidemic age when families have been spending more time apart for COVID safety reasons.
Of course, Amazon Glow does not enable the youngster to contact whomever they choose. A parent or guardian must first set up the Amazon Glow by giving approval and pre-approving the contacts that the youngster can call. Parents might then restrict access to the gadget to only family members or trusted family friends. The parent may also turn off the cameras and microphone at any moment by closing the device’s physical privacy shutter.
Because the Amazon Glow is not an Alexa device, no voice or video recordings were made. It also does not keep track of or preserve location data, let alone the drawings created. However, Amazon will keep track of your profile settings and activity history in order to recommend related activities and material accessible through the Amazon Kids+ membership that your family might like.
The device will eventually retail for $299.99, but it will be available for $249.99 at launch. It includes the mat, a mat case; the Tangram Bits puzzle game, and a one-year Amazon Kids+ membership. (Amazon Kids+ is a paid subscription program that gives you unrestricted access to tens of thousands of kid-friendly books, videos, TV series, educational applications, games, and Alexa skills.) Amazon Glow is not widely accessible yet.
Customers will instead need to go to www.amazon.com/glow and seek an invitation to join the early access program. According to Amazon, the first gadgets will be delivered to consumers in the United States in the coming weeks. The SDK will be accessible in the first half of 2022, and developers are encouraged to apply.
