Deutsche Telekom is working on a concept phone without apps – all tasks are performed by AI

T-Mobile’s controlling shareholder Deutsche Telekom decided to share a teaser of a smartphone that ditches apps entirely in favor of an AI-powered interface to get things done.

Deutsche Telekom has teamed up with Qualcomm and Brain.ai to create an app-free phone powered entirely by cloud-based AI. This device is currently called the T Phone and will be showcased later this month at MWC 2024 in Barcelona.

In addition, Deutsche Telekom intends to introduce a smartphone based on Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with on-board AI. It’s unclear whether this will be a concept device or not, but the prospect of seeing a phone powered solely by AI and performing all the tasks is really exciting.

Deutsche Telekom chief product officer John Abrahamson said:

Artificial intelligence and large language models (LLM) will soon become an integral part of mobile devices. We use them to improve and simplify the lives of our customers. Our vision is an AI-powered smartphone concierge without apps. A true everyday assistant that satisfies your needs and simplifies your digital life.

With T Phone, Deutsche Telekom is implementing a very ambitious idea that is not entirely new. The Nextbit Robin device also ran on Android, but used a cloud-centric approach. But AI wasn’t that advanced back then. Perhaps with new AIs, the T Phone approach will be more viable. Really, who needs a phone without apps?