Nothing’s Telephone 3 might be all about AI apps

Nothing CEO Carl Pei simply revealed a video wherein he makes two massive claims: that smartphones are actually the AI gadget of the longer term and that AI may change the way in which we use these telephones. “Individuals love their telephones!” Pei says within the video. However “the person expertise hasn’t actually modified for a very very long time.” Every thing’s sooner, prettier, and simpler, he says, “however the basic expertise hasn’t modified.” Pei now thinks that’s about to vary.

I ought to be aware that Pei does casually point out the existence of the Telephone 3, which has been rumored for some time and, if Nothing retains to its typical July launch schedule, may very well be on cabinets quickly. In keeping with Pei, the Telephone 3 may even be the corporate’s first true AI telephone.

Within the video, the Nothing staff reveals off a few demos. One seems to be like a straight rip of OpenAI’s GPT-4o demo: a customized voice assistant baked into the working system. That’s what everybody thinks the way forward for smartphone seems to be like. The opposite demo reveals a customized, dynamic homescreen that appears like a mixture of app launcher and information feed. It routinely grabs and reveals a QR code for a ticket you’ll want quickly, pulls content material from the online, and reveals related reminders and climate. The thought, Pei says, is to consider how AI can transfer smartphones previous their app-centric mannequin and right into a system that simply is aware of what you want and the place it’s always.

Pei is cautious to say that these are brand-new prototypes and that even messing along with your homescreen will take some time to occur. “You may’t simply ship a brand new product and be like, ‘right here, there’s no extra apps, are you going to purchase it?’” he says within the video. “After all they’re not going to purchase it.” (I can’t show that this can be a dig at Humane or Rabbit, however… it positively is.) Pei says Nothing’s job is to construct a bridge from the present methods to the subsequent ones. He additionally compares Nothing to Nintendo, within the sense that the job is to not compete on know-how however merely to make enjoyable and great things.

Nothing has clearly been desirous about AI for some time: it built-in ChatGPT into the latest Ear headphones, and final yr on The Vergecast, Pei informed me he was already desirous about a world past apps. “We really feel like apps have gotten too highly effective,” he mentioned then, “and with the Telephone 2, we’re attempting to not less than give customers choices to take a few of that energy again.” Final yr, that largely meant reskinning the interface and giving customers extra notification controls, however now that appears to imply AI. “Perhaps we are able to simply inform the telephone what we have to do,” he continued, “and it might use these apps for us with out the apps even being seen within the foreground.”

As to the smartphone level: Pei has all the time mentioned that the explanation Nothing began by constructing headphones and smartphones is as a result of they’re the devices everybody really makes use of proper now. “A computing gadget made up of a big display screen with some digicam functionality, I believe, is gonna be the dominating kind issue for a very long time,” he mentioned final yr. He believed that constructing telephones was a safer, if extra aggressive, enterprise, and the Humane and Rabbit expertise appears to show him proper. He has been hinting, although, that there may be a subsequent massive factor coming quickly — now it sounds prefer it may be the massive factor you have already got. Just a bit completely different.