Imagine a phone that knows what you want to do next and that proactively helps you move forward with your tasks. That’s what T-Mobile parent Telekom and the folks at Brain AI have teamed up to achieve, presenting their Concept AI Phone at MWC 2024. The vision is to replace the familiar app-based interface and workflowwith an AIthat naturally processes your requests and generates its own UI on the fly. In practice, things are a little less glamorous right now, but it’s still an interesting attempt at reinventing the smartphone wheel.
The idea of the concept phone is easily described. Rather than presenting you with a home screen filled with apps that all serve a specific and inflexible purpose, the handset does away with all this and, by default, presents you with one choice only: a big, friendly button you can tap to interact with the onboard Natural AI. The largeactionmodel itself, as Brain calls it, runs mostly on the device itself, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but can pull necessary information and data from the internet. This AI-based approach is supposed to put the action you want to take front and center rather than forcing you to switch from app to app to achieve what you want to achieve.
The AI can walk you through the whole process from idea generation to product purchase
Brain AI founder Jerry Yue compares his vision with the way the internet used to work before Google. You’d either have to know where to look to find what you want or you’d have to scroll through pages of keywords on Yahoo rather than searching and finding the exact things you need with Google. That’s the way apps work, in his opinion. Another disadvantage he sees with apps is that they’re often built with either engagement in mind, making users addicted to them, or with only a single purpose. With AI, he hopes to break these boundaries and make the phone serve as a proactive concierge more than the current approach where you need to put a lot of thought into using the tool itself.
In practice, it’s clear that the concept phone is still in early stages — which is likely precisely why it’s a concept. Telekom and Brain only showcased a handful of use cases that seem like features you’d only need every once in a while. You can use the AI to book a flight, allowing you a combination of your voice and on-screen interfaces to navigate different options and book your flight from right there. Another demo involved asking the AI to recommend a gift for someone special in your life, with direct purchase options from Amazon available. It’s not clear when and how you need to set up your data like shipping address or payment.
Brain AI founder Jerry Yue presents the concept phone on stage at MWC 2024
Another aspect missing altogether in the current demo is the fact that phones are primarily communication devices for many people, with messaging and social media only ever brushed upon. That’s likely why during the demo, the personnel was quick to admit that you can still easily access apps on the phone by swiping up on its home screen to reveal an app drawer. They explained that while the concept puts AI input front and center, it still lets you choose between the AI experience and classic apps.
It’s possible that this will change in later stages, but right now, that’s a reasonable approach. Rather than fully upending the way phones work to push their vision onto users, it will still be possible to access vital features and tools you may otherwise miss out on with the AI phone.
An AI concept like this is not something we haven’t seen before. TheRabbit R1, introduced at CES 2024, has a similar approach that goes a step further in a way. Unlike Telekom’s concept phone, it comes in a novel form factor that’s different from a phone and doesn’t offer any access to apps at all. It feels like Telekom and Brain’s idea could be a little more realistic in the long run, though, precisely because it’s not restricted to not showing any apps.
Brain also offers its Natural AI as an iPhone app,introduced in 2021, where it’s ironicallyyet another app in a sea of millions. According to the App Store description, it seems like the app is limited to a similarly small feature set, though it seems to include recipes and food. While the app has a good rating of 4.7 stars, more recent reviews highlight problems with the purchase process, with some calling the app slow and “scam,” indicating that there is a lot more work left for Brain and Telekom until they reach the lofty goal of an AI phone that you can trust as your concierge.
