Honor Launches New Smartphone And Laptop With Artificial Intelligence Features

Honor, globally launched its newest smartphone, Magic 6 Pro. (photo: x @Honorglobal)

JAKARTA - On Sunday, February 25, Chinese technology company Honor globally launched its newest smartphone, Magic 6 Pro. They also showcased the experimental artificial intelligence (AI) function in the form of eye tracking that allows users to remotely open and move their cars just by looking at their phone screens.

The tool is already available in China and the company is working to integrate it commercially abroad. Honor, which was sold by Huawei Technologies in November 2020 and is now owned by the country's Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co, before Sunday only releasing its new phone exclusively in China.

Technology and telecommunications companies are releasing new products and features ahead of Barcelona's annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) which will begin on Monday, February 26, with the hope that the excitement around the generative AI will increase business prospects.

Smartphone makers hope the excitement around AI will help revive the sluggish smartphone market, although many experts say that generative AI may cause legal or ethical problems.

Honor, which competes with companies like Apple and Oppo to gain share of China's smartphone market, is also working to globally integrate a large language model called LLAMA 2 (LLM), a tool similar to ChatGPT, into their phones.

According to the International Data Corporation, in 2023, Apple will have a market share of 17.3% in China, while Honor has a market share of 17.1%.

Honor also launched its newest laptop, MagicBook Pro 16, on Sunday, with an AI feature that allows users to move applications such as messaging apps between devices, for example from an Android smartphone to a Windows PC, with one drag.

"We strongly believe in the transformative power of collaborative synergy, especially in the AI era," the company's CEO, George Zhao, said in a statement.