BONN (dpa-AFX) - Deutsche Telekom, together with two partner companies, has presented the concept of a new type of smartphone in which the user no longer sees any apps. Instead, the "AI phone" uses voice commands to interact with an artificial intelligence (AI) that collects information from the Internet and shows it on the display, such as flight bookings or gift suggestions. "The future will be app-free," said the founder and CEO of Brain Technologies, Jerry Yue, on Monday at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade fair in Barcelona.

The US technology company is developing the AI of the smartphone, which is being developed as a cloud-based version and as a model that also works offline. Chip manufacturer Qualcomm is also involved in the project. It remains to be seen whether one of the AI phones will ever come onto the market. The American Yue firmly assumes that it will.

For the cloud version, Deutsche Telekom is relying on its existing mid-range T-Phone device, which runs on Google's Android operating system. So the smartphone itself is nothing special - but what is being done with it is: the use of AI to make the view of apps superfluous. According to industry experts, the project could be the start of a trend in which apps lose influence and smartphone use changes radically./wdw/DP/jha