Coolest Tech Drops from Asian Companies at MWC 2024
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By: Jinpeng Li
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Mobile World Congress (or MWC), one of the world’s biggest mobile technology fairs, was held this year in Barcelona. And as you can imagine, everything now comes with added AI.
Maybe you’ve already seen some sick products on social media, including transparent laptops, bendable phones, or Barbie flip phones. But what surprised me is that many equally innovative and interesting products come from Asian companies. Today, let’s take a look at these cool items, which you may have missed out on but really could be the next big thing.
Honor Wants Your Eyes to Be the Controller, Not Your Hands
Honor’s latest smartphone, the Magic 6 Pro, boasts a wicked cool feature: eye-tracking. According to a WIRED reporter, this tech lets you control a real car by simply looking at a button within an app — talk about a futuristic joystick!
Honor, the Chinese phone maker, has expressed concerns that the eye-tracking feature, primarily trained on East Asian eyes, might not be as effective for people of other ethnic backgrounds. This tech allows users to expand notifications with nothing more than a glance. Picture this: your arms are full of grocery bags, yet you can still navigate your phone effortlessly.
It’s refreshing to see innovative ways to interact with our mobile devices beyond the usual scrolling and swiping.
Xiaomi Wants to Drive Into the Premium Segment with SU7 EV
Xiaomi unveiled its first electric vehicle, the SU7, in China this past December. At MWC, a sleek blue SU7 model was showcased right at Xiaomi’s booth. The company is boasting about the SU7’s lightning-fast acceleration, achieving zero to 60 mph in just 2.78 seconds, courtesy of its custom-built electric motors. All of this is powered by their proprietary operating system, HyperOS.
This move also signifies a strategic shift in Xiaomi’s pricing approach. “We believe it’s an excellent entry into the premium segment, especially since we already have 20 million premium users in China through our smartphones,” said Lu Weibing, Xiaomi Group President, in a conversation with CNBC.
OPPO Wants AR Glasses to Transform Wearables
At MWC, OPPO debuted Air Glass 3, AR glasses controlled by touch sensors for viewing digital info like maps in real life. Powered by their AndesGPT LLM, it’s currently for Chinese users only. These glasses connect to OPPO smartphones, offering music, information display, and voice calls, looking just like ordinary glasses.
Petnow Seeks to Track Losts Pets Xiaomi Wants CyberDogs to Dance in Sync
Korean company Petnow introduces a novel app that uses biometric scanning and AI to identify lost dogs and cats, offering an alternative to microchipping. The process involves taking photos of your pet’s face and body to register them in the Petnow database. If someone finds a missing pet, they simply upload photos to the app, and the system attempts to find a match. Success, of course, hinges on widespread adoption. (WIERD)
Xiaomi Wants CyberDogs to Dance in Sync
TechCrunch reporter described Xiaomi’s robotic dog as “looking a bit more friendly than its predecessor,” resembling a Doberman with cropped, pointy ears. At MWC, Xiaomi exclusively showcased the robotic dogs’ dance moves and their ability to perform group dances. Now, these CyberDogs can be purchased online for $3,000.
OnePlus Wants to Extended battery life
Just when the world thought OnePlus exited the wearable devices race, the company is back after three years with its upcoming Watch 2, which introduces a dual-chip system, alternating between the Snapdragon W5 and the efficient BES 2700 MCU, to promise 100 hours in Smart Mode. OnePlus Europe’s head of strategy said The hybrid chip/OS system was a major contributor to the gap between devices.
Infinix wants to put the back of your phone to work
It’s not an e-ink screen. It’s Infinix new technology called E-Color Shift. This method changes the electric field within its microstructure by applying various voltages, causing color particles to shift and display selected colors with very low power consumption. You can also customize the colors to your personal preference. According to Engadget, Infinix still needs to iron out a few kinks regarding thermal performance and thickness.
XReal Wants to Compete with Apple Vision Pro
XReal’s latest smart glasses wowed at CES 2024. Praised by Stan Schroeder of Mashable as what “the Apple Vision Pro secretly wants to be,” they’re sleek, comfortable, and compatible with any USB-C device. CEO Xu Chi highlights XReal’s focus on enhancing tech R&D and achieving autonomy in their technology, notably with the domestically-produced XReal Air 2 Ultra, except for its Sony display.
ZTE Wants to Free You from 3D Glasses
ZTE’s latest tablet offers a 3D viewing experience without the need for 3D glasses. By tracking your eye movement, it presents a slightly different image to each eye, creating an impressively effective 3D effect.
Asia Must Reads
Baidu’s Q4 Revenue Rises 6%
China’s AI leader Baidu reported a Q4 revenue of $4.92 billion, with profits surpassing expectations due to improved cost control.
Yes, But: While Baidu’s AI model Ernie contributes to its revenue, the bulk of the company’s income still stems from search advertising. Furthermore, investments in training and developing generative AI have led to an 11% increase in research and development expenses.
Why it matters: With over 100 million users for its ChatGPT-style service, Baidu’s financial performance is a key indicator of the monetization success of AI technology in China.
Japan Aligns with Taiwan in Chip Competition
Why it matters: Substantial subsidies and proactive government support show Japan is rebuilding its chip manufacturing sector, seeking to reverse a decline from a 50% market share in the 1980s to just 10% today, amidst competition from South Korea and Taiwan.
Syntax Snack
I believe that for AI, the most valuable information is always hidden in the latest essays, not in the hype of the news. I’ll walk through some jargon in this new column and aim to lower the barrier for you to understand the true social issues AI affects.
Algorithm aversion: This refers to the tendency to trust human decisions over statistical judgments or imperfect algorithms. But people will use imperfect algorithms if they can modify or control them.
Algorithm appreciation: People prefer algorithmic to human judgment. Consider how often you’ve utilized ChatGPT to assist you with mundane or challenging tasks. We can see algorithm appreciation in people’s interaction with Gen AI tools.
Glimpse
India will have its first ChatGPT-style service in March. BharatGPT, which is backed by Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani, can work via 11 Indian local languages.( Saritha Rai / Bloomberg)
A fake video showing a party leader calling for votes has gone viral on WhatsApp groups and X, indicating that Deepfake technology is significantly influencing India’s 2024 election. (Yashraj Sharma / AI Jazeera)
When open-source technology meets geopolitical issues: Some Chinese AI firms use open-source models, like Meta’s LLaMA, to build their own systems. Washington is in a difficult spot. ( Paul Mozur, John Liu and Cade Metz / New York Times)
ByteDance has launched a new model. The Chinese tech giant released the open-source text-to-image model SDXL-Lightning on Hugging Face. Based on the open-source model SDXL, SDXL-Lightning accelerates generation speed by ten times, making it the fastest text-to-image model at a resolution of 1024, and reduces computing costs to one-tenth. ( Xiao Fang / Jiemian)
U.S. export curbs on China won’t extend to mature chips and legacy chips. (Sadayasu Senju / Nikkei Asia)
$1.4 trillion. This number is the market value of Nvidia, which over the past 12 months has surged. AI powered this company’s profit, which soared nearly ninefold, and the stock price closed at 32 times its sales. ( Marie Solis / New York Times)
Vertical AI applications have been targeted by some VCs in Southeast Asia. Singapore-based VC Antler has placed bets on 37 startups across Southeast Asian countries, all of which focus on using AI to solve the pinpoint challenges of different industries. ( Catherine Shu / Techcrunch)
Jonathan Mayer, a Computer Science professor at Princeton, has been appointed as the first Chief AI Officer in the US Department of Justice. His role includes advising on complex technical issues, encompassing cybersecurity, AI, and other emerging technologies.
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As always, I greatly appreciate your comments, questions and story tips, reach out to me: jp.li@theabacus.news
Originally published at https://theabacus.substack.com.
