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 next month, a top executive said.
Richard Yu,
chief executive of Huawei’s consumer business, on Saturday revealed a powerful
new mobile phone chip Huawei is betting on for its upcoming 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 Oct. 16,
Yu confirmed. He declined to detail new features, but the phones are expected
to boast large, 6-inch-plus full-screen displays, tech blogs predict.
Artificial
intelligence (AI) built into its new chips can help make phones more
personalized, or anticipate the actions and interests of their users, Yu said.
As examples,
he said AI can enable real-time language translation, heed voice commands, or
take advantage of augmented reality, which overlays text, sounds, graphics and
video on real-world images phone users see in front of them.
Yu believes
the new Kirin 970 chip’s speed and low power can translate into features that
will give its phones an edge over the Apple iPhone 8 series, set to be unveiled
on Sept. 12, and Samsung’s range of top-line phones announced this year. 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 during 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 percent.
Huawei
describes 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.
Most
importantly, Huawei aims to use the Kirin chips to differentiate its phones
from a vast sea of competitors, including Samsung, who overwhelming rely on
rival Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm, the market leader in mobile chip design.
Among major phone makers, only Apple and Huawei now rely on their own core
processors.
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