Huawei takes on rivals with AI
Huawei aims to use artificial intelligence powered features such as instant image recognition to take on rivals Samsung and Apple when it launches its new flagship phone in November.
Huawei aims to use artificial intelligence-powered features such as instant image recognition to take on rivals Samsung and Apple when it launches its new flagship phone in October, an executive said on Saturday.
Richard Yu, CE of Huawei’s consumer business, revealed a powerful new mobile phone chip Huawei is betting on for its new flagship Mate 10 and other high-end phones to deliver faster processing and lower power consumption.
Huawei will launch the Mate 10 and its sister phone, the Mate 10 Pro, in Munich on October 16, Yu confirmed. He declined to give details on new features, but the phones are expected to boast large, full-screen displays, tech blogs predict.
Artificial intelligence (AI) built into its new chips can help make phones more personalised, or anticipate the actions and interests of their users, Yu said.
As an example, he said, AI could enable real-time language translation, heed voice commands, or take advantage of augmented reality, which overlays text, sounds, graphics and video on the real-world images phone users see in front of them. Yu believed the new Kirin 970 chip’s speed and low power could translate into features that would give its phones an edge over the Apple iPhone 8 series, set to be unveiled on September 12, and Samsung’s range of topline phones announced for 2017. Huawei is the world’s No 3 smartphone maker behind Samsung and Apple.
“Compared with Samsung and Apple, we have advantages,” Yu said in an interview at the annual IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin. “Users are in for much faster [feature] performance, longer battery life and more compact design.”
The company asserts its newly announced Kirin 970 chip will preserve battery life on phones by up to 50%. Huawei described the new chip as the first Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for smartphones. It brings together classic computing, graphics, image and digital signal processing power that have typically required separate chips, taking up more space and slowing interaction between features within phones.
Huawei also plans to use the Kirin chips to differentiate its phones from a vast sea of competitors, including Samsung, who overwhelmingly relies on rival Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm, the market leader in mobile chip design.