Amazon phones, Apple’s glory, and the reincarnation of Steve Jobs

It’s a veritable techapalooza this week, with mobile products and rumors of same flying like confetti on New Year’s Eve. Following the Windows 8 tablet and phablet announcements at Berlin’s IFA 2012 show last week comes Motorola Mobility, Nokia, Amazon.com, and Apple, all begging for your attention.

OK, scratch that last one — Apple never begs for anything, let alone attention. It just basks in glory.

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Yesterday, Nokia unveiled its newest WinPhone8-powered Lumias, models 820 and 920. Motorola rolled out new Droids, but probably not the droids you were looking for. The latest Lumias are “the most innovative smartphones in the world,” according to Nokia. The Droid Razr HD, Razr M, and Razr Maxx HD all have huge screens and fast 4G LTE connections with long battery life, or so we are told.

But that’s probably the last you will hear of them, at least on the blogosphere. Both Nokia and Motorola picked the wrong week to debut products and/or stop sniffing glue, because they’re going to get steamrolled by what’s coming next.

Today, in a few hours, Amazon will roll out its latest Kindles. The smart money is on a 7-inch Kindle Fire with a paper-white display and a new 10-inch Amazon tablet, though in this case the smart money appears to be based on glimpses of products shown in a commercial during the Giants-Cowboys NFL debut.

That’s apparently not all. AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka speculates that Amazon could unveil its own set-top box (let’s call it a “Roku killer,” just to tick off Apple). If gadget blog The Verge is to be believed, Jeff Bezos will also take the wraps off an Android-based Amazon smartphone, a report has been “confirmed” by “multiple sources,” per Verge writer Nilay Patel. [Update: Oops! Amazon unveiled neither a set-top box nor a smartphone. So much for the “confirmed” reports.]

But even Amazon’s red-hot Fires pale in the blinding reflection of yet another cryptic Apple special event, brought to you by the numbers “12” and “5.” On Wednesday, Sept. 12 at 10 a.m. Pacific, time itself will stop for one hour as Apple unveils yet another incarnation of its groundbreaking market-making handset.

However, the “iPhone 5” may be the least surprising ever, in part because it appears to be the leakiest iPhone ever, with alleged specs and photos floating around the InterWebs for months. The big news? The 5 is probably going to be longer than the iPhone 4. Also, I hear that in this version Siri will sound a lot more like Sofia Vergara, but I’m not sure I believe that.

Speaking of incarnations, it appears Steve Jobs will be among those watching the Apple event, though from a slightly more elevated position.

According to Phra Chaibul Dhammajayo, abbot at the Dhammakaya Temple just north of Bangkok, the late Apple co-founder has already been reincarnated and is now living in an invisible glass structure not unlike an Apple Store floating high above Cupertino. Per the Wall Street Journal:

[Chaibul] says that Mr. Jobs now enjoys sleeping on a floating hover-bed, and when he thinks of a piece of music he would like to hear, it automatically plays. If he is hungry, an aide quickly brings him a tasty treat.

“Everything is high-tech, beautiful, and simple, exactly the way he likes it, and he is filled with great excitement and amazement,” Phra Chaibul says. In fact, the technology surrounding the reincarnated Mr. Jobs works so seamlessly that he has no reason to “bare his canine teeth” or otherwise exercise the hot temper for which he was known on earth.

The Journal reporter drolly adds: “Phra Chaibul’s claims are impossible to corroborate.” Ya think?

That is by far my favorite rumor of the week. How about you?

If there is a Jobsian afterlife, what do you think it would look like? Post your heavenly dreams below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Amazon phones, Apple’s glory, and the reincarnation of Steve Jobs,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.