Smartphones set to become 'superphones'

Neither love nor money could get reporters in to the Honor press conference at CES 2017 in Las Vegas January – unless they had preregistered. Keynote addresses at the world's biggest consumer electronics show routinely attract a full house, but in the country that gave the world Apple, the international press corps seemed fixated on the touted "epic" capabilities of the Honor Magic, the latest model in the budget smartphone brand by Chinese manufacturer Huawei. There are almost as many mobile phone subscribers in the world as there are people – 5 billion devices, for a population of 7.5 billion, according to the 2017 global edition of the GSMA's Mobile Economy report. But the fact that a new launch can elicit so much hype is evidence that we still can't get enough. Huawei's Honor Magic might be the first, but surely by no means the last, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled smartphone.