China-based OEM Huawei in a short teaser ad video, takes a dig at Apple’s new Face ID feature, which the firm introduced with its tenth anniversary iPhone X. After mocking Apple’s Face Id feature, Huawei announced that it will be releasing the “real AI phone” on October 16. According to The Verge, this teaser is the announcement for the Mate 10 handset’s unveiling.
Huawei mocks Apple
In the teaser, the mobile manufacturer makes fun of iPhone X’s neural engine and asks people to wait for “The Real AI Phone.” Tech experts are of the belief that Huawei is making a reference to its Mate 10 that is set to make its debut in October.
In the 11-second long advert, Huawei uses a clown emoji on the smartphone’s display to show the unlocking of the handset using Apple’s Face ID. However, the ad shows that the Face ID technology fails to unlock the handset, Huawei thereby implying that the feature is prone to failure. The video teaser was accompanied by a tagline, which stated that facial recognition was not for everyone. Apart from that, Huawei asked the people to “unlock the future” with “the real AI phone” on October 16.
Mate 10 to offer superior AI?
While the teaser takes jibes at Apple, Huawei can actually make such claims, as it is way ahead in the mobile AI space. In August, Huawei took the wraps off its latest chipset i.e.
the Kirin 970. This CPU comes with an NPU or neural processing unit. Similar to Apple’s neural engine, the Huawei NPU is a collection of processing cores embedded inside the smartphone’s chipset that has been dedicated only for AI based tasks. However, there is a possibility that the AI integration for the Kirin 970 can go deeper than what has been explained above.
For instance in the Mate 9, the previous flagship from Huawei, the OEM resorted to machine learning to help the handset’s OS learn the user’s habits regarding device use. If the operating system is familiar with the owner’s usage patterns, it can assign memory as well as high processing power to those apps which are mostly used by the owner.
While it is unclear if the OS actually works according to the user’s preferences or not, it is clear that Huawei is quite ambitious and looking to unleash a superior AI on the Mate 10.
Come October, whether the much-awaited Mate 10 houses superior AI capabilities will be revealed. Only time will tell whether consumers are lured by the handset and if the company's claims are true.
