And finally, while we are on the software side of things, let's talk AI.
Phone manufacturers made a big deal of AI being available on phones and in 2018 even midrange phones started to get dedicated hardware acceleration chips for AI tasks.
But even with hardware acceleration onboard, the marketing machine is a bit misleading regarding the scale and reach of the AI capabilities.
When they throw in AI, everybody imagines a thinking robot, and marketing is keen on selling this image.
But the reality is that the current AI implementation on phones is a data-driven software optimization, which allows the smart device to pick up patterns without having to be programmed specifically for them.
When we say patterns, we mean app usage patterns or phone wake patterns or even scene patterns - patterns in your photos so it can recognize the objects in them and patterns in the scenes you take pictures of so it can adjust colors and exposure.
Without meaning to downplay the entire progress made in this space over the past year, we just want to set the facts straight.
AI doesn't mean your smartphone has an intelligent robotic mind. It means that the computer system has been primed through the methods of machine learning to recognize patterns it has never seen before. It's able to recognize that you are pointing your phone to a pet even though it has never seen your particular pet before. It's able to recognize a particular human face across many photos in your Gallery app even though it has never seen this person before. It's able to shortlist all your pictures of bottles, or receipts or other identifiable objects with a simple search. But the AI functionality doesn't stretch much further than that.
We're sure we'll be hearing more of AI in 2019 but it would take a bigger leap in functionality to get us bitter tech reviewers excited.
At least that means we're nowhere near close to the machines taking over our world. Right? Right?
ref: https://www.gsmarena.com/smartphone_trends_of_2018-review-1871p4.php