What you need to know
- Honor celebrates its third anniversary by discussing its future in foldables, which appears bright, as continues to dominate the Chinese market.
- The Chinese OEM will continue to innovate on-device AI and this starts with the YOYO AI assistant created for the Magic 6, backed by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
- Eye health is also a concern as Honor continues to research ways of reducing eye strain, fatigue, and including features like the Circadian Night Display function.
Chinese OEM Honor is getting candid about its thoughts on its future with foldables, on-device AI, and PWM displays during its third-anniversary celebration at the Fortune Global Forum 2023.
It was said that Honor will continue to pursue endeavors within the foldable phone industry moving forward, per Phandroid. Using a survey conducted in China, the company highlights how over 64% of consumers are interested in switching from a premium smartphone to a foldable one.
Moreover, Honor's achievement of having the best-selling foldable phone in China, the Magic V2, only furthers its new ambitions. The Chinese OEM reportedly obtained a 200% growth in sales in Europe while claiming the top spot in the Chinese foldable market during Q3 2023.
As for the Magic V2, Honor debuted the phone back in July as a thin and light foldable phone with a 5,000mAh silicon-carbon battery in China. Despite the company launching the phone globally a couple of months later, it doesn't appear as though it'll make its way into the United States.
Elsewhere, the Khaleej Times reports Honor is becoming increasingly more interested in on-device AI. This was pretty evident following the Chinese company's on-device LLM, YOYO, which debuted during Qualcomm's presentation in Hawaii back in October. The AI software will be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which already features some impressive generative AI capabilities as the company looks to take on Google and the likes of the Pixel 8 series.
Honor's software draws its knowledge from the content stored on a user's phone to generate videos and other aspects of relevant content when called. The technology is capable of recognizing and differentiating faces between people and is even smart enough for extremely narrow queries like "pictures of Jane smiling."
This "hybrid AI" model was built with a user's privacy in mind, as Honor states their data will remain on their device.
Lastly, Honor states it seeks to progress with "identifying real users’ problems and solving them." Such issues include users' eye comfort, reducing strain, and any other uncomfortable health problems — like PWM sensitivity. Honor has reportedly invested over $140 million into creating "eye comfort displays" through its newly created lab.
In conjunction, Honor debuted 3,840Hz PWM dimming technology and Circadian Night Display to further its efforts with eye protection. This was evident during the official reveal of the Magic V2 foldable, which includes Dynamic Dimming to help reduce eye strain and fatigue when staring at the screen over long periods of time. The Circadian Night Display function was also included, producing warm colors to promote better sleep.
