Who will replace the smartphone? While our mobiles have become part of our daily lives, many companies are trying to replace them. The last one is called Humane and tries it with… a connected pin.
How about controlling your digital life with laser projection and finger movement? No, you’re not in a bad remake of Minority Report, but in the future imagined by Humane, the latest company to want to make your smartphone an old-fashioned accessory to put in the closet. For this the firm is counting on its “AI Pin” and the least we can say is that the bet is daring.
Halfway between the smartphone and the Apple Watch
To replace the all-purpose screen that has found its place in our pockets since 2007, the firm has imagined a sort of connected pin that you can attach to your t-shirt, shirt or dress. Equipped with a magnetic battery, to slide inside the garment to hold the accessory in place, the gadget resembles an Apple Watch with a slightly concave front. Inside we find a Snapdragon processor, a 13 Mpx camera with a 120° field angle, 4 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage, 4G and Wi-Fi compatibility and, therefore, a laser projector.
It is thanks to the latter that it is possible to interact with the AI Pin. By touching the touch surface on the exterior of the device, the projector launches and displays an interactive interface on the palm of your hand. By rotating your wrist or pinching your fingers, you can navigate the OS and perform basic actions, like reading or sending messages via voice dictation, taking photos, or listening to music.
Obviously, the heart of Humane’s promise lies in the integration of artificial intelligence within the device. The latter, which relies on language models from OpenAI and Microsoft, is capable of sending messages, answering your questions or translating a language heard live to display the result, literally, in the hollow of your hand.
A “dematerialized smartphone”
The purpose of the device, as summarized by Imran Chaudhri (the company’s CEO), is ” to have a high-performance computer at all times […] We want to have access to more knowledge, more information […] let it be done in a way that allows us to stay present. » Hence the choice of a screenless device that comes between you and the world. The idea is somewhat reminiscent of the Google Clip, this AI-boosted camera that Google released in 2018 before putting it away and never talking about it again.
As things currently stand, that said, it’s hard to see what more the AI Pin can do than a good old smartphone. The laser projection interface seems less easy to use than a touch screen, the camera cannot show you your photos live and the need to dictate messages rather than writing them mechanically limits the occasions during which it is convenient to use such a device. This “dematerialized smartphone” aspect is accentuated by the fact that the AI Pin runs on a derivative of Android, Google’s mobile OS.
Sold for $699 with a 24 month commitment
Certainly, the concept seems straight from a science fiction film that will make the most gadget-loving among us drool, but in reality the device does not offer innovative features that could make you want to put down your smartphone. Because, yes, the AI Pin presents itself as a replacement for your smartphone, not as an accessory to it. Humane thinks it can convince you that you will soon no longer need that rectangle of glass and silicon that you carry around in your pocket.
The accessory is currently only available for sale in the United States and costs $699. Amount to which must be added a 24-month telephone subscription to the operator T-Mobile (to ensure 4G/5G connectivity). It’s rarely cheap to be on the cutting edge of technology.
Source : Humane
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