Amazon held an event today to officially unveil something new and exciting. So exciting, in fact, that Amazon called out to the biggest Amazon fans to join in the event. The result? 60,000 people applied to be there in Seattle for Amazon’s newest announcement, and the company allowed 300 to get in. Lucky for them, then, that they got to be there when Amazon officially unveiled their first smartphone.

The device is quite similar to some other handsets out there at face value, but Amazon’s keen on the details. The buttons on the outside of the Fire phone are made from aluminum, and it boasts injection-moldel steel connectors. The display measures in at 4.7-inches, it’s an IPS panel and it displays at 590 nits of brightness and has a circular polarizer, so reading it outside should be easy. Under the hood, there’s a 2.2GHz quad-core processor, along with 2GB of RAM and Adreno 330 graphics. There’s a 13MP camera on the back, with a f/2.0 five element lens and optical image stabilization.

The back of the device is glass. There’s a dedicated camera button along the side of the device for instant access to the camera, even when the display is off. (You’ll get unlimited photo storage, too, thanks to the cloud and Amazon.)

Amazon services are a no-brainer. When you’re watching videos, you’ll get access to X-Ray, which shows you information about the movie/show you’re watching, as well as actor information and other details. You’ll also be able to “flick” your movies from the Fire phone to your Amazon TV. The Fire phone also comes with ASAP, which allows for the device to pre-cache what you want to stream, so it will start instantly.

It’s an Amazon phone, so while the specs may not be the best –and they’re certainly not the worst– it’s all about the services. That goes for the reading experience, too, which includes Whispersync for Voice, and the Kindle’s immersion reading mode.

You’ll get Amazon’s MayDay service, which is a free service that’s always available to help you figure out how to work your phone, like how to turn off certain features, or access other aspects of your device. The service, as seen on Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX tablets, pops up a video chat session with an Amazon MayDay rep, and they’ll be able to access your device to help you in real-time. It will work over Wi-Fi or 3G/4G networks.

A new feature for the Fire phone is Firefly, which works as a product reference tool. As we’ve seen in other apps in the past, you’ll be able to use Firefly in conjunction with your camera to find out what a product is, exactly, and then find ways to buy it. This works for books, CDs, URLs, QR codes and other things. Even paintings. If you decide to skip a purchase then, but want to buy it later, Firefly keeps a list of the things you’ve looked up, and you can just tap the item from that list and buy it then. Firefly will also recognize music, much like the app Shazam. Firefly makes it strikingly simple, and eerily fast, to buy pretty much anything at any given moment.

As expected, Amazon’s Fire phone does indeed utilize a 3D interface. What Amazon calls “Dynamic Perspective.” Their showcase of the technology started with a focus on the lock screen, which had plenty of cool 3D and perspective-trickery going on. The clock-on-a-mossy-rock was a standout. They showed what it looks like to use the Dynamic Perspective while looking at a 3D-rendered map, and the Empire State Building. In practice, it means that the differing layers of the interface will move in relation to the other elements on display. So if you’re looking for a small detail in the corner of a map, you just need to move the phone a little bit, and you’ll be able to see more of the map. For some, and for the people who really fall in love with the new perspective effects, it could mean less scrolling and panning. It’s also functional in games, but only one was showed off on stage. Bezos used Dynamic Perspective to look around the level, to get the lay of the land. Should be interesting to see how the functionality works in other titles.

On stage, Jeff Bezos flicked the phone to the left, and an OS-level navigation drawer slid into view. As he went into an app to look at dresses, tilting the phone caused new dresses to appear, while tilting it in another direction put more information about a dress on the display. When he accessed a Washington Post article, he tilted the screen to scroll through the text, rather than scrolling with a finger on the display. Not necessarily brand new, but it seemed to work well enough on stage.

Amazon’s making use of “active widgets” for the home screen on the Fire phone. Much like their tablets, the Fire phone has a digital carousel that you can manipulate, spinning from one app to the next. This time around, though, you’ll find a preview of content in those apps, like email and text messages, which are right below in a widget that you can manipulate. You’ll see previews of emails right under the email app icon, for instance.

As far as release goes, the Amazon Fire phone will be an AT&T-exclusive device. It will have two variants: a 32GB model and a 64GB version. The 32GB model will sell for $199.99 on a new, two-year contract. The 64GB version will go for $299.99 with the same contract deal. It comes with a year’s worth of Prime service for free.

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