The insane amount of buzz/hype about OpenAI's new smartphone . . .

[britechguy]

. . . seems to have almost gone viral. For something that no one has even had in hand yet, and where what's being presented is clearly mostly "demo mode" (which means fictional, for all practical intents and purposes) I cannot believe the breathless prose that's been popping up all over the place.

It also seems that no one is accounting for how seriously the ongoing, and not soon to be resolved, chip shortage will be in driving the price of a device that will require far more copious quantities of on-board storage as well as a top-of-the-line processor to do its job even just competently (offline, which is what's being pushed) let alone well. It would not shock me if these things premiered at over $2K per phone, which will severely limit adoption, and you won't have success without mass market adoption.

Claude.ai: [When did the rapid escalation in chip prices, affecting the cost of things like RAM, SSDs, and similar, begin and how large an increase in prices has been seen during that time? Are there currently any projections which foresee an end to this trend in the near term foreseeable future?] (I will say that the contrarian view about Chinese-produced RAM does seem to be holding for Chinese-produced hardware. I have not seen the kind of jumps in price for Chinese-made NUC-equivalents as I have for those produced by companies elsewhere [or for companies elsewhere but assembled in China]).

Does anyone do their homework these days and take "the big picture" into account?

 

[phaZed]

First I'm hearing of it. I'm sure they're pouring money at ads for it - so it's likely your getting targeted for whatever reason.

The way things are going, I wonder if they'll just burn the memory onto the CPU Silicon - no (extra) chips required, and functionally with these new processes being so much smaller and dense, they can create the memory "at no extra cost", but lose room for some (or a lot) of processing and CPU space.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Hadn't heard about it or seen any buzz about it.
Just Googled it. Expected to go into production mid 2027, dual CPUs...hockey puck shaped...no screen. More of a "companion device" they call it.

 

[britechguy]

hockey puck shaped...no screen.

That's not the phone. From member Richard Turner on the Blind AI group, in message #1533:
----
Here is one article about the screenless speaker:

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/apple-intelligence/articles/openai-first-device-isn-t-163550514.html

BTW, most speakers are screenless, this is like advertising corn chips as gluten free, when they are gluten free by default….

AND

The term I am finding about a phone is "AI first phone,"

https://www.gizmochina.com/2026/07/08/nubia-world-first-ai-agent-smartphone-waic-2026/
----

That AI phone is one slated to be produced by a Chinese Company ahead of the one by OpenAI.

Sorry for my conflation of OpenAI's screenless device and the AI smartphone. I think that the folks at open AI are insane if they think that most people would ever want a mobile device sans screen.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

BTW, most speakers are screenless, this is like advertising corn chips as gluten free, when they are gluten free by default….

I miss when phones were screenless!

 

[britechguy]

I miss when phones were screenless!

So do I, in a way. But I've never considered smartphones to be "phones" other than coincidentally. I've always described them as a true mobile microcomputer that so happens to have a phone feature.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Clicks Communicator takes the world by storm, and not just for former BlackBerry fans.

I was perfectly happy with a flip phone and a Handspring Treo. Each did its respective job very well indeed.

 

[britechguy]

BTW, other buzz about the phone, not the speaker: https://www.entrepreneur.com/busine...n-ai-phone-compete-with-iphone-samsung-galaxy

 

[nlinecomputers]

Not read the articles yet but how’s this different than an iPhone with AI Siri?

 

[NETWizz]

They can keep it. I do NOT want an AI powered Smart-Phone, I definitely do NOT have an Alexa or Google Dot ... and really am not too happy that Siri seems to interject into conversations she shouldn't be listening to.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

And Google will dominate all with the best in breed Pixel....adding local CPUs for a local version of Gemini!

 

[britechguy]

I have adamantly refused to use any voice-activated assistant on any platform since the day they appeared. To quote the old standard, "I get along without you very well, of course, I do."

But at the same time, after working with individuals who are blind or vision-impaired for over a decade and a half, those same assistants are both an accessibility and convenience miracle. Different strokes for different folks.