A real disruptive announcement promised Telekom CEO Tim Höttges at an evening event during the MWC 2016 in Barcelona. And Höttges immediately added: "Hereby we ring in the post-app-time, Apps are history in the future". In the future, the skills and value of a device will be measured by its skills, the CEO continued.
What prompted the telecom boss to such pithy words was the announcement of the partnership between Telekom and i.am +, founded by the entrepreneur and musician will.i.am. As the first product, the two partners showed with dial a wearable, which is smartphone and clock in one. The special feature of the device is also that it does not have a classic operating system, but on the voice operating system AneedA. AneedA is designed to combine innovative features with lifestyle, entertainment and communication.
Operation is via the voice control AneedA and works independently of a smartphone. This is characterized by an intelligent and contextual search. Through the voice control all functions of dial can be fully utilized even without input at the end device. AneedA delivers music, information and has a personal, artificial intelligence. The built-in front camera is also suitable for selfies. For connection to the network dial has a slot for a Nano-SIM card.
During the product presentation dial was able to fascinate. Thus, the wearable responded quickly to the speech input and quickly corrected any recognition errors in the context. However, one or the other time a second attempt was necessary. The skills of AneedA, as Höttges calls the functions new German, could certainly convince in points such as a flight search or information on music. However, it remains to be seen how adaptive the artificial intelligence in everyday life in other subject areas really is. As far as AI is concerned, AneedA is reminiscent of IBM's Watson idea . It is also unclear how dial is used in everyday life with the German language, because in Barcelona the presentation was only in English.
It is also unclear when the wearable is available in Germany. The MWC was only to hear that dial will be available during the year in the first European telecoms markets. Also for the price no information was given. The combination of watch and smartphone in the UK is rumored to cost £ 20 a month.
