Huawei ...ON THE FUTURE OF... Phones

How AI smarts and folding tech could bring back smaller screens and simpler phones, and why 5G is vital to the future.

CLEMENT WONG IS Huawei’s VP, Global Product Marketing, and has spent decades working in the digital and mobile industries. He’s been at Huawei for seven years, helping to steer its growth worldwide from a relatively unknown Chinese brand into a gadget juggernaut.

How do you think the physical form of phones will change in years to come?

When you look at the trend in the last 10 years, people keep making the phone compact and sleek, but the display is huge. But there’s a little bit of a difficulty, because if you keep the display huge, the phone won’t be very light or compact. So that’s why the foldable phone is coming out.

I think some more variable devices are coming out, too. So I think ‘foldable’ and high-speed connectivity from 5G will drive a lot of different forms in the coming future.

Do you think foldable phones will become the norm, or will they stay as one option, maybe for higher-end users?

I think, for every new advanced technology that comes out, we will have what we call a patient period. No matter if it’s 3G or 4G, at the beginning, for sure, it’s early techadopters who try it first. That is the norm.

So I think the foldable phone has the same thing. At the beginning, some tech-savvy or first-movers will love to try it, but in the long-term – maybe a couple of years, maybe 10 years, when there’s more to make use of the foldable phone – I think it can become more popular for the mass market.

Do you think we might see a return to smaller-screen devices, more in the four-and-a-half to five-inch range? Maybe as a result of the options that folding phones bring?

I think people want it compact, but with a screen and user interface that’s still big enough for them. But to make them happy, we might not talk about what we reduce or make less powerful to be compact. Instead, people want to have the device be more intelligent, and to make their tasks simpler.

So I think if the phone becomes more smart, because of AI intelligence, the phone can be smaller. But what we call a simple experience is… actually, the background is not that simple. The background has a lot of different technology to enable that simple experience. Say, for example, right now, if you go back to the phone’s application list it can be overwhelming, or the phone can suggest too many things for you based on your behaviour.

There’s a lot of stuff to work on. For us, we are proud that we have our own AI-capable chips that can enable a lot of intelligent experiences for the user.

We want to create a seamless AI life for everyone. No matter if it’s a phone or TV or an IoT device – the whole idea is to create a seamless AI experience across it all. So I think this AI experience has a lot of room to grow, and there are things we need to do, on both the device and experience side.

How much more do you think there is that software and AI could do to enhance features like the camera, where you are starting to hit limits on how big a sensor you can put in?

Actually, a couple of things. Especially in some situations right now, it’s still very difficult to take nice shots, like if it’s a super-dark condition, or the backlight is very harsh – I mean, a tough environment, a complex environment. AI will help because AI can precisely detect the environment and the object, and then make a good tuning, as well as an adjustment for the photo.

Another side is the expertise. I’m not a professional photographer, but I always need to create good framing or layout. I believe that in the future, this camera capability will further enhance with the consumer. You and I will be able to shoot like a professional photographer, because the AI includes a lot of good sense of photography and judgement in terms of an artistic style. I think in the future, we will keep improving, and it will become a good device for everyone to take a very good picture.

Do you think we’ve reached a balance in battery life that is going to stay the same for a while? Or do you think there can be increases in battery life soon?

In our Mate series, we’re always talking about the higher battery life. We’re one of the pioneers to create a more-than-one-day usage life [in smartphones]. Because of the technology and software, right now people use the phone for two days before charging. But at the same time, if you think about people’s usage, when your battery can

sustain two days for normal usage, and people are looking for more than that, you’re looking for how fast you can charge up the phone, right?

Say, for example, for our Mate 30, we can just charge with SuperCharge for 30 minutes, and more than half of battery life can sustain for more than a day. So I think it’s not only the battery or the long-lasting battery, but also charging – how fast is the charging? It’s so important. And also for our previous Mate series, we provided reverse charging too, in case you’re using another phone, or using wireless charging. We can wirelessly reverse charge the battery, to donate some battery for others.

So you think in the near future, it’s more about being able to charge really quickly and flexibly than necessarily doubling battery size?

Yeah. Because the phone – our phone, for sure – can sustain a long period, right? So you don’t need to keep worrying about, ‘When do I need to charge the phone?’, but how fast you can charge the phone, instead, is the important thing.

What do you think is the biggest change coming to phones in the next few years?

The million-dollar question! Three things. First, 5G is a thing already, right? It’s bringing more phone speed. The second thing is, we also talked about the form factor of the foldable phone. A big, giant display that’s compact in size. How do you make it foldable, or very compact but the display is relatively big?

The third thing is, the seamless AI life – how to make use of all the other devices to create a richer experience for you, not just on the phone. For example, when you’re using the phone at home, the phone maybe will talk to your speaker, so you’re using the speaker for your conference call. How do we create a seamless experience that’s intelligent, and can enrich people’s life?

What do you think are the most important changes that 5G brings?

5G has three characteristics. First, there’s high throughput. For some, the download rate can be a gigabyte per second. So it’s hugely fast if you want to load a 4K video.

At the same time it enables low-latency. So that is interesting for driverless cars. Or more extreme – I saw a programme on TV talking about remote surgery, which needs to have a very low-latency connection. And then there will be a ton of applications and services that benefit from this.

The third one is machine-to-machine talking. This is also important. So these few things are the core capabilities if 5G happens. So I think we will have a smart city soon, because of the machine-to-machine talking as well.