T-Mobile and Perplexity announce new ‘AI phone’ priced at under $1K
It was inevitable that this year at MWC in Barcelona, at least one courier would announce a great effort to build a smartphone with a TOP AI company. And here it is: T-Mobile, the mobile telco owned by Deutsche Telekom, said it is building an “AI phone”, a cheap handset created in close collaboration with confusing, together with Picsart and others; Plus a new AI assistant -app who calls it ‘Magenta Ai’.
T-Mobile said it will reveal the device in the second half of this year, and it will sell it in 2026 for a price tag of less than $ 1,000.
“We will be an AI company,” said Claudia Nemat, a DT board member who supervises technology and innovation, in a press conference Monday. It is not the construction of fundamental large language models, she quickly added: “But we do the AI agents.”
It is striking that Pertlexity plays a key role in the development of the telephone – a signal of how the startup, today is best known for its generative AI search engine – makes efforts to build more “proactive” products.
“Pertexity is switching from just an answering machine to an action machine,” said Aravind Srinivas of the startup on stage during the event. “It’s going to do things for you, not just answering questions. It can flights for you to book, book reservations for you, send e -mails for you, send messages, post your phone calls for you and all things like that such as Set Smart Reminders. “
Nemat did not come in many details of the hardware – no device specifications, no information about who is building it, nor on which operating system it will be executed (from the photo here it looks like a taste of Android). But she did notice that the phone “costs much less than the $ 1,000 above” that are the typical price tags on devices such as the iPhone.
The phone will have built AI into how, with the experience built by Perplexity “so that you can experience the entire Monty,” she added. “AI on your lock screen.”
Other services on the phone are Google Cloud AI, Elevenlabs and PicsArt, the company said.
Magenta AI, an app-based version of the AI assistant from T-Mobile, will be available for those who want to install it on their own Android or iOS devices-Zolang you are already one of the 300 million customers of T-Mobile, Nemat said.
The news is the latest development in a well -known story from the world of Telecom. For years, carriers – both mobile and fixed – have pined for ways to better compete with technology companies. In particular, they have focused on Apple and Google, who have been operating systems and telecoms that telecom companies have largely taken out of the comparison when it comes to making money around apps, and ‘possessing’ that customer relationship.
(And their anger is not only trained on those two. Deutsche Telekom has had a long -term legal dispute with meta in Germany about the prices that Meta pays to carry traffic over the network of DT in the country.)
Leaning to current fashion for all things AI – which is a penetrating theme this year at MWC – this phone is the last attempt by DT to get its own stronger foot.
But moving fast is not really in the playbook here. Pertlexity and Deutsche Telekom have worked together since he has a partnership ink in April 2024. And DT spoke for the first time about this AI phone a full year ago, during the Mobile World Congress event last year.
For confusion, the company not only has to compete with the very well-capitalized OpenAi and Anthropic when it comes to building new AI tools for consumers; But also large technology companies such as Google, which has built in his Gemini Ai into his basic search experience. So here it seems that confusion leans to the next phase of how AI can improve the user experience.
“These are the kind of things that you should do earlier in your own way, learn how to use these different apps,” said Srinivas. “All these things will become easier, so that you can concentrate your time and energy on problem solution…. This is really the next phase in which AI will switch from normal and that you always listen to the instructions in something that is just on your phone, always listen to you and help you proactively. “
It is still to consider whether T-Mobile or Pertlexity will be able to crack the notoriously difficult smartphone market, which is dominated by a small number of companies and over the years even Leviathans has seen money in their chips and back. It nevertheless points out how magnetic the AI -Pull is now, and how even the most old companies see it as a possible panacea. And how even the most advanced startups are looking for safe canals in the midst of severe competition in their market.
