Deutsche Telekom will present a smartphone prototype without installed applications at MWC. The German operator’s idea is this an artificial intelligence assistant that performs all functions.

Generative AI is the new star of global technology and we have news on models and clients week after week. Google today introduced a new family of language models (LLM) called Gemma. These new deep learning models are the basis for the AI ​​client capabilities we use, increasingly powerful and expanding use cases of these technologies, which, thanks to their own operation, no one knows where they can go.

In smartphones, they have already been used primarily to process images taken by cameras, and the recent Galaxy S24 expanded its AI capabilities with the help of Samsung and Google. Deutsche Telekom’s proposal goes much further in its use.

Smartphone without apps?

Apps are essential to mobile phones and, together with the big stores that support them (App Store and Play Store), are largely responsible for the era of mobility and the explosion of smartphone sales. Hence the big question, Could we live without them?

We have reached the point where we have dozens and dozens of apps installed on our phones. Accessing it isn’t always easy with increasingly complex interface designs that force us to wade through endless drop-down menus, clicks, and searches.

The German operator’s idea is this the AI ​​assistant takes over access to all tasks What the app does today: «an assistant based on artificial intelligence (AI) will replace countless applications on a smartphone»assures Deutsche Telekom. “As a concierge, the assistant understands your goals and takes care of the details”.

The phone’s generative AI interface will be powered by Brain.ai and will take on the role of a wide variety of apps to predict and generate what to do next to achieve the end goal desired by the user. For example, if you want to book a trip, instead of having to visit multiple apps to complete the task, you ask your smartphone (using voice or text commands) to do it for you and the assistant. I would take the necessary steps to do this without opening any app.

The app-less smartphone concept will be applied to the carrier’s T Phone model and will be on display at MWC next week. The operator says that the real product “It will take some time before it is commercially available”, but development is ongoing. If the concept sounds familiar, just say it follows in the footsteps of the Rabbit R1 device we saw at CES. But this is the first time we’ve seen it on a mobile phone.