China’s Honor bets on AI smartphones for global growth ahead of an expected market rebound
- CEO George Zhao said new Honor phones will have an ‘intent-based user interface’ that uses AI to anticipate user needs and create a seamless experience
- Honor used an event ahead of MWC Barcelona for the global launch of its Magic6 Pro handset, which comes with its MagicLM AI model
Honor CEO George Zhao Ming laid out the company’s new AI strategy at a launch event in Barcelona on Sunday, which involves creating an “intent-based user interface” that will help enable a seamless experience across different devices and systems. He was speaking ahead of the opening of mobile communications industry trade show MWC Barcelona, formerly Mobile World Congress.
In a showcase of the new interface, Zhao demonstrated Honor’s new Magic Portal feature. This allows users to tap and drag a text message that includes a restaurant name, for example, and open the location instantly in Google Maps. The idea is that AI is able to anticipate the needs of users to enable a better experience.
Honor also used the event for the global debut of its latest flagship smartphone, the Magic6 Pro, which features AI-powered capabilities like Magic Portal and MagicLM, the company’s 7-billion-parameter large language model (LLM). Prices in Europe start at €1,299 (US$1,405).
Honor is open to working with industry partners in developing its AI capabilities, Zhao said at the event. He used Facebook owner Meta Platforms as an example, as Honor uses the US tech giant’s open source Llama 2 model to generate text and answer user questions on the Magic 6 Pro.
