Honor: Chinese smartphone giant integrates Meta’s AI model Llama 2
Honor, already the smartphone manufacturer with the largest market share in China after Apple, is bringing its new flagship to Europe. And the Honor Magic 6 Pro not only wants to score points with a 180 MP telephoto lens, long battery life, and strong OLED display but also stands out from the competition by integrating an AI model directly on the device. But that also has its price, because the smartphone will cost 1,300 euros in Europe.
So what is the point of integrating a Large Language Model (LLM) on a smartphone? Above all, it is intended to ensure that data can be used more easily. According to Honor, Magic Portal’s AI quickly recognizes addresses in a text message and redirects users to Google Maps. The advantage: effortless navigation at the push of a button. In addition, it simplifies access and sharing of information for social media such as TikTok and Facebook. This means booking details or online search results can be forwarded with a single mouse click. “In addition, Magic Portal facilitates image-based shopping experiences by seamlessly guiding users to platforms where they can find and purchase the items they want,” says the tech giant.
Honor, which quickly became a major player in the Chinese smartphone industry, was founded as a sub-brand of Huawei in 2013. Because of the US ban on Huawei, Honor was sold to the state-affiliated Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology in 2020.
Llama 2 7B directly on your smartphone
This is interesting because Honor largely relies on US technology despite a growing software and chip industry in China. The operating system, dubbed “MagicOS 8.0,” is based on Android 14 from Google. The latest model is also equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform and the Qualcomm AI Engine. And… the Large Language Model, which is now to be integrated and expanded step by step, is based on the open-source AI model from Meta Platform.
Namely on Llama 2. In numerous benchmark tests, this is sometimes significantly inferior to the AI models from OpenAI, Google, or the French startup Mistral AI. Honor grabbed the smallest version, the one with 7 billion parameters, to install directly on the device. “This technology is still in the development and integration phase. However, the objective is already clear: to make the language model available in several languages on the smartphone,” says Honor. This means the beginning you should not expect too much from the performance or from supported languages in Europe. Anyone who is used to ChatGPT or Gemini will not be particularly fascinated by Llama 2.
Honor’s plans for AI on smartphones are big. It was shown that you could even control a car using eye tracking on your smartphone. The fact that Large Language Models are finding their way onto smartphones is the latest trend in end devices. Samsung has relied on the integration of Google’s Gemini in its latest flagship Galaxy S24. The Humane Pin, a gadget powered by AI models from OpenAI, is also coming onto the market in the USA. Apple is also expected to add AI functions to its next iPhone model and the iOS operating system in 2024.
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