Both Apple and Google have dropped the ball enough with the state of recent releases that some iPhone-equivalent-disruption product from the AI industry is becoming conceivable, though I would be surprised if it turns out not to be running Android in some form.
Putting a lot of effort into pushing complexity into software to reduce manufacturing complexity is precisely the sort of thing you worry about when you're getting serious about building consumer products.
> though I would be surprised if it turns out not to be running Android in some form.
Just yesterday I saw a post I cant recall if on here or reddit, someone coded an entire OS with Claude Code, I would not be surprised if they invest AI compute at building an OS themselves, though I'd never buy a phone from these companies.
The issue is getting developers to create apps for a new OS nobody uses (yet). And nobody will use it if they can't have their banking app and uber on it
This becomes even tougher if they go the Apple route and don't allow other phone manufacturers to use their OS. Alternatively, if they go down the Windows Phone route, we saw how that played out considering that Google _pays_ manufacturers to use Android
Making OS is very hard, but getting necessary adoption is likely even harder
Android has a huge amount of battle tested stuff for running things like media codecs and GPUs connected to devices that are not rebooted for months on end by normal people. (The iPhone wasn't an entirely new OS either for a good reason).
The whole vibe coding an OS might become a thing in the next few years, but you still have to QA and test it, and there simply hasn't actually been enough time for that.
I wonder if it might be some totally clean sheet of paper OS design but also capable of running Android applications in an emulation/virtualization layer. I think they know that any mass market handheld smartphone consumer device isn't going to succeed (windows phone) unless people can easily install all available apps from either the google play store or apple app store.
App store inertia has to be the decisive roadblock, and yeah, there would need to be some workaround.
This could also be where China gets another win because of their de-Googled Android-not-Android ecosystem which would enable more competition in their local market than can be achieved elsewhere.
But honestly, why do that when there's already a good, open-source(ish), well-designed, highly secure operating system platform that already runs Android apps? Any new clean sheet OS is either going to be worse than Android on one or more of these dimensions, or it will be absurdly expensive to vibe code.
I mean by your own logic you can say you're doing the same thing.
You think smartphones will get disrupted because you're bored by the mature form factor.
I don't see that happening unless the new hardware and the way people interact with it is truly "magical" in some sense. Smartphones as a mature device category have so many things going for them that anything new will likely come as a complement for them (which apple can capitalise on) vs a complete replacement.
Actually, no. It's the irrelevant changes, such as Liquid Glass, which are the problem, where we all are made to learn new stuff to keep some designers busy.
> I don't see that happening unless the new hardware and the way people interact with it is truly "magical" in some sense.
But a truly AI enabled interface _would be_ magical. Being able to have a phone where your interface to it is completely built around your preferences, and not change at the whim of some external designer, for example. Where apps are merely things it uses on your behalf in the background . . . Neither Apple or Google could do this because it would disrupt their own cash cows too much.
There is also a lot of scope for using neural nets to drive peripherals (including moving parts) in non obvious ways which could add to it all.
I'm just discovering Glass Imaging (a bit difficult as their website seems overloaded), but it seems they are in software solutions, not a hardware manufacturer or designer.
it really does seem like they’re just buying stuff up in the hopes that something accidentally turns into a profit to cover their previous investments/promises. Kind of a ponzi of acquisitions
Putting a lot of effort into pushing complexity into software to reduce manufacturing complexity is precisely the sort of thing you worry about when you're getting serious about building consumer products.
Just yesterday I saw a post I cant recall if on here or reddit, someone coded an entire OS with Claude Code, I would not be surprised if they invest AI compute at building an OS themselves, though I'd never buy a phone from these companies.
The person got it running on bare hardware.
Found it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1wfpydl/i_asked_c...
This becomes even tougher if they go the Apple route and don't allow other phone manufacturers to use their OS. Alternatively, if they go down the Windows Phone route, we saw how that played out considering that Google _pays_ manufacturers to use Android
Making OS is very hard, but getting necessary adoption is likely even harder
The whole vibe coding an OS might become a thing in the next few years, but you still have to QA and test it, and there simply hasn't actually been enough time for that.
AFAIK the app ecosystem is much more valuable and the marginal value of being able to run iOS apps should be higher, right?
This could also be where China gets another win because of their de-Googled Android-not-Android ecosystem which would enable more competition in their local market than can be achieved elsewhere.
For the mass market, the AI industry has a trust problem.
ChatGPT is _enormous_. It doesn't matter if you don't trust it, half the planet does. They don't need to get the HN bubble on board.
Edit to add: the absolute state of the replies to this. Hilarious.
I don't see that happening unless the new hardware and the way people interact with it is truly "magical" in some sense. Smartphones as a mature device category have so many things going for them that anything new will likely come as a complement for them (which apple can capitalise on) vs a complete replacement.
Actually, no. It's the irrelevant changes, such as Liquid Glass, which are the problem, where we all are made to learn new stuff to keep some designers busy.
> I don't see that happening unless the new hardware and the way people interact with it is truly "magical" in some sense.
But a truly AI enabled interface _would be_ magical. Being able to have a phone where your interface to it is completely built around your preferences, and not change at the whim of some external designer, for example. Where apps are merely things it uses on your behalf in the background . . . Neither Apple or Google could do this because it would disrupt their own cash cows too much.
There is also a lot of scope for using neural nets to drive peripherals (including moving parts) in non obvious ways which could add to it all.
Only the HN bubble is interested in a new publicly subsidized AI phone option, over the AI phone already in their pocket at least.
Edit: what is this, Reddit?
Probably they are buying the staff, not the technology.
Will be interesting to see how the legal battle plays out as well.