Nothing Phone (2a) Plus With AI News Widget: Specs, Prices, Availability Leave a comment
Nothing has a new smartphone—the Phone (2a) Plus—practically similar to the Telephone (2a) it launched earlier this 12 months, however with barely beefed-up specs. It prices $399 and is offered within the US by way of the identical beta program. But it surely is not the brand new Android handset we discover most attention-grabbing, it is the corporate’s new widget.
The “Information Reporter” widget, accessible by default on all Nothing and CMF smartphones plus different Android and iOS gadgets by way of the Nothing X app, enables you to rapidly play a information bulletin summarized by synthetic intelligence. It’s learn out by the synthesized voice of Tim Holbrow, the corporate’s chief monetary officer. (Nothing is utilizing ElevenLabs’ tech for sound synthesis and output.) As quickly as you faucet the widget, you are greeted by a soothing British voice:
“Welcome to Nothing Information, the place the one factor we take critically shouldn’t be taking something critically. I am Tim, your CFO and reluctant information reader. At present, we’re making one thing out of nothing, as a result of that is actually our job.”
The widget will begin biking by way of a collection of information tales—you possibly can press and maintain the widget and faucet Edit so as to add or take away classes you are thinking about, comparable to enterprise, leisure, tech, and sports activities. These information tales are pulled from “trusted English-language information sources” by way of News API, utilizing Meta’s Llama giant language fashions for the summarization.
You possibly can swipe down the notification bar and press the following button on the media playback notification to skip a narrative, to which Holbrow will add a quip. “Not feeling that one? Let’s discover one other.” After I skipped fairly a number of in a row, AI Holbrow requested, “Do you even like information?”
The summaries are one minute every (roughly), and also you get eight tales per day. Each morning, the widget will refresh with a contemporary batch. Sadly, and frustratingly, the widget does not offer you a lot to go on if you wish to learn extra. There isn’t any attribution to the place it pulled the information from, and no hyperlinks are offered to learn immediately from the supply.
Each smartphone firm has been touting some sort of generative AI characteristic in new gadgets this 12 months. Samsung has Galaxy AI; Google has its Gemini chatbot and a bevy of AI options in Pixel telephones; Motorola launched Moto AI not too long ago; and even OnePlus has been teasing a number of AI features in its telephones, like AI Eraser, which helps you to take away undesirable objects from images. Nothing launched a ChatGPT integration in its earbuds earlier this 12 months, and this widget is the newest generative AI characteristic to land.
