AI Pin by AI startup Humane should be regarded as the most eye-catching star product at MWC (Mobile World Congress). As a completely AI native product, AI Pin meets people’s long-standing expectations for hardware innovation. Open AI’s embedded technology, laser projection, and gesture operations make AI Pin look like a very cool product. But if we treat it according to the standards of mass-produced consumer products, AI Pin is obviously not a qualified product.
For example, laser projection is the embodiment of Humaine’s “screen-free” product concept, but the display effect is similar to that of a Casio electronic watch and is far inferior to a mature OLED screen;
AI Pin laser projection|Image source: Humane
There is no localized application and it relies heavily on the Internet. Judging from the live demonstration video, any AI answer requires a few seconds of waiting time;
The price is as high as US$699 (approximately RMB 5,023), and there is a monthly subscription fee of US$24 (approximately RMB 172);
Putting these aside, the most important thing is that AI Pin is difficult to answer a question: Why do I need AI Pin now that I already have a smartphone ?
The same problem applies to the rabbit r1 that stole the show at CES and sold 50,000 units in a few days.
Others are not taking such big steps. Also at MWC, German operator Deustche Telekom teamed up with AI startup Brain.ai to showcase an AI concept mobile phone, T-Phone.
They claim that this is a mobile phone without an App – will the T-Phone be the prototype of future AI mobile phones?
01. A mobile phone with “no App”
In terms of configuration alone, T-Mobile can be said to be a standard cheap mobile phone: the memory is only 2GB, the Snapdragon 625 is a 14-nanometer processor released in 2016, and the front and rear dual cameras are 15 million and 13 million pixels respectively.
Its core concept is this: abandon the past mobile phone design around Apps, and instead use AI to use contextual predictions to generate interfaces to help users complete tasks. Therefore, when you light up the screen, the first thing that appears is an AI assistant interface . There is also a physical AI button on the side of the phone, which can wake up the AI assistant at any time.
A typical scenario is shopping. When you ask it: “What should I buy for my bedridden grandma?”, T-Phone will recommend related products based on your needs, from “bed table” to “neck support” U-shaped pillow”.
If you are interested in this product, after clicking, AI will continue to generate detailed information about the product, including text, pictures, and videos. After selecting the product you like, click on the picture and it will be added to the shopping cart on the third-party e-commerce platform.
Jerry Yue, founder and CEO of Brain.ai , said the system will attract about 7,000 e-commerce websites when it is officially launched.
In this case, T-Phone functions as an e-commerce aggregation platform .
Another example LeSheng demonstrates is purchasing airline tickets. He told the AI assistant to book two first-class tickets from Barcelona to Los Angeles on March 12. The phone paused for a moment, then generated a flight list. Once LeSheng finds a suitable flight, he can pay using the mobile payment system of his choice without having to switch to another app or service.
Use T-Phone to purchase air tickets|Image source: CNET
Not just shopping, users can ask the AI to perform various actions such as suggesting travel destinations, creating slideshows using photos, posting to social media, drafting documents, and more.
T-Phone’s AI function is based on the combination of cloud and terminal. High-energy-consuming tasks are processed by cloud AI to reduce the power consumption of the mobile phone ; some low-power-consuming tasks can be directly processed by local AI to solve the delay caused by data transmission.
Brain.ai believes that due to the lack of context of these connections established by humans, today’s apps cannot dynamically adjust or adapt to human needs in real time, nor can they learn from past connections to adapt to new needs. Another drawback of apps is that they are often built with the goal of keeping users addicted.
“We want to use artificial intelligence to do the exact opposite – make humans the center of technology. You don’t go to the applications, the applications come to you. We want to give power back to people.” Le Sheng said.
Deutsche Telekom and Brain.ai predict that in ten years, you won’t remember apps anymore. You just talk to the AI and it does all the work for you.
LeSheng shows off T-Phone at MWC|Image source: androidpolice
It sounds great, but it is currently unclear how to set up return information, payment and other information; and how the AI assistant will help users once after-sales problems arise and a real customer needs to intervene.
Brain.ai launched an AI assistant app called Natural in 2021 that is highly similar in concept to T-Phone. Although the rating is as high as 4.7 stars, many also mentioned problems such as no after-sales service and more expensive flight tickets.
In addition, what if the user just wants to chat on WeChat or browse their mailbox? The addition of AI assistants in these scenarios will not make efficiency higher.
02. AI as a super entrance
It’s obvious that the T-Phone is still in its early stages, which is why it’s a “concept phone.” At present, the official has only demonstrated a small number of usage scenarios, and they are not considered high-frequency. Trying to replace a traditional smartphone with such a phone is obviously difficult.
In fact, T-Phone is not a completely AI phone. Swipe the home screen upward to enter the traditional Android interface . In essence, T-Phone is a traditional Android phone with an external AI shell.
This may be the smartest step in T-Phone’s product concept, because it does not try to subvert existing smartphones and uses the AI assistant as the first entry point to the phone.
Why is the entrance important? Because it is the first step in the expansion of all functions. Everyone who passes the entrance is a potential customer and may pay a toll .
When personal computers first emerged, Microsoft seized the entry point of the operating system. Software builds user scenarios, and hardware makes sense. At this time, all PC manufacturers are Microsoft users.
In the Internet era, Microsoft has seized the browser again and further consolidated its Windows operating system with its monopoly position.
Early Internet users had a habit of writing URLs on paper, and typing them in letter by letter when accessing. So portals like Yahoo came into being.
After that, the number of websites exploded, and the efficiency of page turning and retrieval on portal websites was very low. Search engines like Google were born, and the business model of online advertising was built. To this day, online advertising is the main source of income for Meta, Baidu, and ByteDance.
r abbit r 1. AI Pin , which has a similar concept to T-Phone , assumes a scenario where everyone is eagerly waiting to be ready to enter the AI era . This may be an illusion created by AI, and no one is ready for this yet.
The iPhone didn’t come out of nowhere. Apple had experience making low-power devices like the iPod; flash memory needed to be viable at an affordable price point; Samsung needed to make good enough processors; 3G networks needed to roll out; and the iTunes music store needed to provide the foundation for the App Store.
Everything happened in 2007, and the mobile era exploded.
The iteration of technology is often gradual, and there is a long iteration time between the emergence of new technology and the realization of the final outcome. The new technology must be developed well enough; the conflict with the old technology must be intense enough before people will have the courage to cut it off.
From this perspective, T-Phone is not a mobile phone that does not require an App. Instead, it’s a phone that relies heavily on the existing app ecosystem, which is why it’s more likely to succeed – people may not be ready to enter a world without apps, but many people should be happy to reduce some of the things on their phones. App.
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