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Last year, Andy Rubin's bold smartphone, Essential Phone, sparked a lot of enthusiasm. But the phone turned out to be a huge disappointment in terms of actual sales, which prompted speculation that the company would perish, despite the keen interest of investors. But a new report claims that Android's father has reworked the priorities of Essential, choosing to focus on a smartphone that could revolutionize the mobile phone industry. Or so Rubin seems to think.
The phone, which could be shown privately as of January at CES, would rather be a company phone from your existing phone. At least at the beginning. The purpose of the unnamed Essential device is to answer e-mails and texts for you, essentially replicate yourself while you spend time doing something else. Hopefully that will keep you informed of all the text messages and you will call them on your behalf, but it is not entirely clear.
People familiar with Rubin's projects shared details about the handset with Bloomberg. Essential suspended the planned domestic speaker and canceled a second smartphone to focus on the new smart device.
The Essential would have a smaller screen than you would expect from a smartphone, and users must interact with it via voice commands from Essential's artificial intelligence software. By Bloomberg, the phone would be similar to the devices of the sci-fi movie Her, in which a human falls in love with an operating system that powers all its devices, including a cell phone without a screen. "Rubin would like to captivate people's imagination with a product really different from alternatives," Bloomberg said.
In addition, Essential plans to market the device as a companion to your main phone or as a phone intended for people who wish to reduce their dependence on the smartphone.
But Google is also working on features that replicate the user for Android. Earlier this week, Google unveiled the Pixel 3 phones, which will feature Duplex (a feature that allows the wizard to make reservations by voice) and Call Screen (a feature allowing the assistant to talk to spam that call). In addition, Gmail offers automated answers and Pixel 3 will be the first phone to support Gmail's Smart Compose, a feature that offers written suggestions when entering your answer.
Apple, meanwhile, would work on anti-glare glasses that could somehow replace the need to check the iPhone all the time and maybe even replace the phone completely afterwards. With regard to the new form factors of the phones, Samsung, Huawei, Apple, Lenovo and others are creating foldable smartphones, the first two companies to launch such devices next year. All of these phone providers are developing their own AI products, including smarter voice assistants. And many of them are looking for ways to reduce screen time for users.
In other words, it will be difficult for Rubin to create a revolutionary new smartphone experience, given the huge gap that separates Essential and its competitors in the manufacture and sale of phones. But that does not mean that this tiny AI smartphone does not seem interesting. At least on paper.
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