As the popularity of so-called dumbphones has surged, the use case was pretty simple. It was a phone for anyone who wanted to avoid social media and excessive scrolling or for the extremely tech-averse and elderly who wanted to avoid too much complexity. Nokia’s latest dumbphones are changing that calculation with a notable inclusion: a big “AI” button right in the center of the phone. What seems like a contradiction might actually be a sign of what we can all expect in phones of the future.
The question it raises is a fundamental one: how much of what your phone currently shows you visually do you really need to look at? Maps? If AI can track your location and instruct you on making each upcoming turn, you probably don’t need that. Email? Probably the same thing if you could get used to dictation. It definitely requires a learning curve and not everyone would want that. The idea of Zero UI, where an interface becomes unnecessary because of how intuitive something works, has been growing over the past decade. This phone is one of the most pronounced signs that we may be getting closer.