AI smartphone with e-ink display vocalizes users’ tasks & social media feed like podcast show

A Phone, a Friend Co. introduces its concept AI smartphone

Start-up A Phone, a Friend Co. introduces its concept AI smartphone with an E-ink display that can verbalize users’ daily tasks, social media feed, and recent news and updates like a podcast show. The AI smartphone has its own voice that talks to users, not in a monotonous way, but more human-like, as if users were listening to a radio host. Aside from vocalizing what it can scan and report back, A Phone, A Friend is packed with features that can help users have a more hands-free smartphone usage.

images courtesy of A Phone, A Friend Co.

E-ink display smartphone with a listening feature

The AI smartphone with E-ink display from A Phone, A Friend comes with a listening feature. The device records the conversations and cookies of users to understand their command behavior and predict what they might want without explicitly vocalizing it. On the other hand, users may not need to worry about always listening to them since A Phone, A Friend says that the AI smartphone sends users a permission notification. If they don’t want the device to listen, then it won’t listen, and nothing is shared outside of their recordings or conversations.

the AI smartphone with an E-ink display that can verbalize users’ daily tasks like a podcast show

A social media scanning feature is also installed in the AI smartphone with an e-ink display. This turns all the highlights, events, and pieces of news from friends posted on the social media platforms of users – not necessarily the ones they posted – into a summary, which is spoken by the device like a podcast show. In this way, users can listen to what they’ve missed from the virtual world without needing to refresh the device every second. The AI smartphone can also become a personalized host, entertainer, or comedian, as users can choose the voice and style of speaking of the device. If users want their general news to be in an upbeat voice, they can easily choose to have it.

A Phone, A Friend is packed with features that can help users have a more hands-free smartphone usage

It may be expected that A Phone, A Friend’s AI smartphone with an e-ink display doubles as a virtual assistant. Since it learns their daily tasks and phone behaviors, the device reminds users of deadlines for the day, including meetings and presentations. It can even rewrite clickbait articles on its own, so when it reports back to users, these stories make sense without them needing to click on the links. A Phone, A Friend’s E-ink display phone also studies the writing style of users, so it can predict the kind of words and slang they might use in replying to their messages.

a social media scanning feature is also installed in the AI smartphone with an e-ink display

conversation modes of AI smartphone with e-ink display

There are a few conversation modes that users can choose from to personalize the voice style of A Phone, A Friend. So far, the startup offers intellectual, life-hacks, cheery, and just a regular talking-it-out. Users can switch between these modes whenever they feel like it. Since the device has an E-ink display, this can help save battery life too. For the other features, the start-up says that its AI smartphone has a single camera and AI photo editing features, while the device’s body is thin, sleek, and rounded. It also features a handy switch button to move between the regular app environment and a Friend mode aka the podcast show.

users can choose the voice and style of speaking of the device

As of publishing the story, A Phone, A Friend Co. says that it is already working on the first software feature of its AI smartphone. ‘We’re getting our hands busy with the first iteration of what soon could be one AI app for all,’ explains Tomas Dirvonskas, a co-founder of the company. ‘Our first software product is a so-called Radio app; it is powered by AI, which adapts to whatever you dig and creates extremely customized audio content of news, digests, podcasts daily, or as often as you’d wish. It is news at your command, minus the things you’re not interested in.’ A Phone, A Friend Co. is based in Vilnius, Lithuania, and was founded by techpreneur Tomas Dirvonskas and marketer Tomas Ramanauskas. The team plans to launch a Friend app in less than a year.

the AI smartphone can sense when the users are stressed and remind them to calm down