LG Aims To Create Smarter Smartphones With AI Capabilities

Barcelona: LG aims to make smartphones as a new hub for artificial intelligence (AI) with its internet of things (IoT) platform – ThingQ.

After unveiling its first ThingQ device in the form of a smartphone – LGV30S, Ju-Ho Sohn, director of AI development department at LG Electronics, told Gulf News that smartphone will become the hub to home appliances with voice command and remote control. It can remotely control devices outside your home to check its status or receive notifications (washing machine/vacuum cleaner).

“So, users can ask Google to talk to LG and find out how much time is left on the washer, if you have a ThinQ-powered washer. You can also ask Google to search with QLens,” he said.

LG calls its smartphone cameras QLens.

The V30S has no major changes in hardware and it stuck to last year’s Qualcomm 835 chipset with 18:9 QuadHD+ OLED FullVision Display with 6GB of RAM and 64/128/256GB of ROM. The rear camera houses 16MP f1/6 aperture camera and 13MP f1/9 wide angle while the front-facing camera sports 5MP with f/2.2 wide angle.

The company launched a suite of artificial intelligence tools, covering image processing and voice recognition similar to Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant and Samsung’s Bixby.

LG’s Vision AI analyses objects and recommends the best shooting mode from among eight modes: portrait, food, pet, landscape, city, flower, sunrise and sunset. The angle of view, colour, reflections, backlighting and saturation levels are all taken into consideration as the phone analyses images in its database to determine what the camera is focusing on in order to recommend the best setting. Over 100 million images were used to create the algorithms.

Another new feature is Voice AI that allows users to run apps and change settings through voice commands alone. Working alongside Google Assistant, the 32 LG-exclusive Voice AI commands up from 23 commands in 2017. Voice AI eliminates the need to search through menu options and allows for direct selection of specific functions.

The Vision AI feature, another new, provides shopping advice through smart image recognition. By simply pointing the camera at an object, LG’s Vision AI can automatically scan QR codes, initiate an image search or provide shopping options including where to purchase the item for the lowest price and other similar products that the customer might find of interest.

In future, Sohn said that AI should provide substantial customer value in all areas of life and actually pursue connectivity with various services and open ecosystem. LG’s vision is to promote artificial intelligence as an approachable and less intimidating technology.

“Creating smarter smartphones with AI capabilities will be our focus going forward and the old V30 device will also get the software update for AI features,” he said.

LG’s V30S AI capabilities are powered by software, unlike Huawei and Apple’s separate NPU (Neural-Network Processing Unit) chip.

NPU is the chipset that power the AI capabilities.

“We consider every option for NPU. Some vendors are incorporating NPU inside and outside the chip,” he said.

The company is struggling to gain traction in premium devices as its competitors benefit from bigger marketing budgets and its mobile division posted operating losses for an eleventh straight quarter.

“We had challenges in the financial end and that is no secret. We try to do things better. People had said good about our G, V and X series but that is not enough in the current environment to carry some of the trends forward. We hope, eventually we will get it right,” said Ken Hong, senior director of global communications at LG Electronics.

According to research firm TrendForce, LG is expected to ship 60 million devices this year to rank seventh globally.