Track Hyper | Honor Magic OS: Driving Technological Transformation in the Industry

Author: Zhou Yuan/Wall Street Journal

Like many of its peers in the broad technology field, Honor has made AI one of its core development directions. To describe Honor's AI strategy focus or strategic focus more accurately, it is the end-side platform-level AI.

Unlike many of its peers in the broad technology field, the core of Honor's AI strategy focus is to launch zero-threshold end-side AI applications, rather than just labeling a trendy concept.

This application is the user application entry based on Magic OS, called "Anydoor," which was launched on December 28th.

On January 9, 2007, the first-generation iPhone released by Apple's founder and CEO Steve Jobs forever changed the rules of the mobile phone industry.

In terms of terminal value, the key to Apple's power to change the world lies in this unprecedented terminal, which brought about a revolution in interaction by replacing keyboards and mice with touchscreens. This filled the gap in meeting the business needs of humans in mobile scenarios, thus forming a new business model based on the mobile intelligent terminal ecosystem and a new industry based on it.

In 2023, 16 years have passed since the advent of the mobile internet era created by Apple in 2007, and the technological dividend brought by Apple has been exhausted. The fatigue of innovation in Apple's smartphones is evident. Standing at the one-year anniversary of the release of ChatGPT, the industry urgently needs a true, zero-threshold GenAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence) application that can fundamentally change the user experience.

The Anydoor application launched by Honor this time has amazing technological capabilities and a new intelligent terminal experience. It is expected to become a huge driving force for the ecological iteration of the mobile internet era and bring long-awaited innovative impetus to the industry.

What exactly is Anydoor? What is its relationship with end-side AI? How will it drive the iteration of mobile internet technology and business models?

A New Interaction Method Reappears After 16 Years

When platform-level AI meets the AI large model pioneered by ChatGPT, Honor's AI platform-level investment of more than a decade has produced brilliant technological iterations and application experiences.

"When large models appear, Honor's platform-level AI capabilities that have been invested in for many years begin to drive large-scale upgrades: first, YOYO's perception capabilities have been iterated/improved into cognitive capabilities," said Lu Haisheng, Minister of MagicOS Solution Design and Development Department of Honor's R&D Management Department. "Secondly, and more importantly, the human-machine interaction method has evolved into 'interaction based on (human) intent.'"

On December 28th, Honor unveiled for the first time the new interactive feature of MagicOS 8.0 called "Anydoor." This is Honor's new attempt at human-machine interaction experience on the one-year anniversary of the launch of ChatGPT.

Wall Street Journal has learned that from January 10th to 11th, 2024, Honor will launch a new generation of intelligent full-scenario operating system, MagicOS 8.0, to developers, partners, and users. This is also a major iteration of Honor's platform-level AI system, MagicOS 7.0, launched in 2022. What is a platform-level AI?

This is where Honor differs from its competitors in terms of broad and narrow concepts. Compared to its competitors, Honor has made AI capabilities platformized and empowered all modules with them, while its competitors only treat AI as an application.

Changing the way we interact was once the core technological transformation that Apple used to open the era of mobile internet, with the power to change the world.

In the 1970s, large-scale integrated circuits and new CPU architectures became the hardware support for the rapid development of PCs, which gradually made PCs smaller and significantly reduced costs. In the early 1980s, Apple was the first to introduce the world's first graphical interface computer, followed by the release of the Windows operating system. The graphical display and interaction greatly reduced the threshold for ordinary people to use computers.

The fundamental change brought about by Apple's graphical interface PC and the Windows windowed operating system was actually the iteration of the command-line interface (CLI) into a keyboard and mouse graphical interface (GUI), greatly improving the efficiency of human-computer interaction and igniting the PC industry.

Then, on January 9, 2007, the first generation of Apple was released, and with its multi-touch (touchscreen) interaction, Apple disrupted the traditional mobile phone industry, pioneered the era of mobile internet, and established a brand new smartphone industry at that time.

Recently, Apple's Vision Pro, which has attracted global attention, has become the focus of the global technology industry because it introduces a completely new form of interaction - supporting various forms of interaction such as eye movements, body movements, and voice: users can browse applications by directly looking at them, select options by tapping in the air with their fingers, and scroll through pages by twisting their wrists, and so on.

Honor's Magic Door also has the ability to change the way we interact.

What are the characteristics of the user experience through Honor's Magic Door?

For example, if a user receives a hotel reservation confirmation message on their smartphone. With traditional interaction methods, if the user wants to get directions for a taxi, they would have to open a navigation app, search for the hotel name, verify the address, and then open the taxi app, repeating several steps, which can be quite cumbersome. With Honor's Magic Door, however, it can be done in one step, achieving the service in just one second: the user can simply drag the message to the edge of the screen, and the system will quickly recognize the user's intention to take a taxi, jumping into the taxi app to complete the action instantly.

This is the technological experience of Honor's Magic Door, which is based on user intent. Honor refers to this as "intent-based interaction": understanding user intent through system-level interaction, including deterministic intent, potential intent, and latent intent.

This is the industry's first new interaction paradigm based on intent: breaking through the traditional interaction dominated by search and memory, evolving into a smart interaction mode dominated by understanding user intent, and solving the problems of information isolation and deep service entry points in the graphical interface interaction mode, bringing a leap in human-computer interaction efficiency. Breaking the entry value of application boundaries

Based on intent, Honor Magic Door can achieve cross-application one-step access.

In short, users can long-press on text, images, files, or videos in the current interface and drag them to the edges of the screen to trigger the Magic Door function (quick jump menu). The current element (text, image, file, or video) can be directly accessed in one step and quickly transferred to other application services (dynamically matched with intelligent recommendation services based on the selected element information).

From a business perspective, Honor Magic Door will have the entry-level application value of aggregating commercial services: all imaginable commercial services or tools with corresponding apps can be accessed with one click through the Magic Door, such as ride-hailing/navigation/search/shopping/unlocking codes/printing/sharing/global collection services.

In this way, fragmented app applications are integrated into a whole through the Magic Door. User needs will be satisfied through the Magic Door. This will be a super application entry with immeasurable business value.

Honor Magic Door is part of the many technological capabilities of MagicOS 8.0, which Honor is about to release. The slogan of MagicOS is "The more you use, the better it gets, the more it understands you."

British science fiction writer Arthur Charles Clarke (1917.12.16-2008.3.19) said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Based on this, Honor named MagicOS 8.0 "Magic OS".

Based on the interaction mode of user intent, the Magic Door breaks the limitations of app application boundaries and truly decomposes applications into services. The Magic OS, which includes the Magic Door application, also breaks the established barriers between applications and services because it can intelligently schedule app services based on user learning and understanding: users no longer need to open a variety of apps to directly access specific commercial service functions.

For app developers, on the Magic OS platform, they can also focus their attention and resources more on improving the quality of application services. With the help of Honor Magic OS, application services developed by app developers can reach more users more accurately and provide users with a better experience, thus forming a positive cycle.

Wall Street News noticed that the technological capabilities of Honor Magic OS to break the established barriers between applications and services have also been developed through many years and iterations, just like many other internet technology applications.

In 2016, Honor introduced the concept of AI on the smartphone side and released the first-generation Magic, defining the Magic Live intelligent system. With the support of AI technology, smartphones can perceive corresponding needs and make machine decisions. This is the 1.0 stage of Honor's AI capabilities, building the prototype of intent recognition and human-machine interaction.

In 2022, Honor launched the platform-level AI MagicOS 7.0, further exploring the mode of intent recognition and human-machine interaction. MagiOS 7.0 can proactively provide suggestions and services based on geographical fences and user habits. For example, if a user has an uncollected package and is near a Hive Express cabinet, YOYO Assistant will automatically send a reminder and push the pickup code as a card to the main interface based on platform-level AI capabilities.

Magic OS 8.0, which is scheduled to be released in January 2024, includes the Anydoor - GenAI era mobile internet business application entrance, which will be based on user intent and enable intelligent flow across applications and devices.

Any technology takes time to develop breakthrough capabilities. The technological capabilities of Magic OS have been iterated for a long period of 8 years, and Honor has invested even more time, two years longer, in AI. During this period, Honor has invested billions of dollars and the team size has exceeded a thousand.

Lu Haisheng said that the essence of Apple's iOS is its ecosystem.

From the perspective of C-end users, Anydoor greatly improves the efficiency of calling services through innovative human-computer interaction methods. It is not difficult to imagine that the ecosystem of Magic OS will be generated automatically. The resource investment of app developers will also enhance the application experience of Magic OS. As the saying goes, "Good things do not need to be spoken, they spread by themselves."

The new ecosystem of "understanding you" in edge-side AI

The value proposition of Honor MagicOS is an AI-enabled personalized full-scene operating system.

Honor CEO Zhao Ming has said that edge-side AI will further inherit and develop Honor's platform-level AI. Regarding Lu Haisheng's mentioned slogan for MagicOS - "The more you use, the better it gets, the more it understands you," Zhao Ming has provided a detailed explanation. One of the key points about "user-friendly" and "understanding" users is actually the protection of individual data security and privacy.

Zhao Ming said that the edge-side large model will be a dedicated personal system that can achieve more modal analysis and interaction. The edge-side large model can analyze user intent from more dimensions and achieve it. In this process, the AI capabilities of the edge-side large model serving individual users, while cooperating with the network-side AIGC, focus on achieving individual data isolation to protect personal privacy.

Zhao Ming believes that the network-side large model incorporates the entire human knowledge base into its scope and becomes smarter as it learns more. However, "as an independent individual, people have not only common characteristics. The mission of the edge-side large model is to better understand individuals. Its philosophy or mission is that the more it understands individuals, the greater the help it can provide to you as an individual."

From the perspective of smartphones, smartphone AI does not have the almost infinite knowledge reserve of humans, and its computing power and data scale cannot be compared with the network-side large model. Zhao Ming believes that the greatest value of smartphone AI is to protect user privacy, make individual data more secure, and make individual lives more convenient, "because it is trained one-on-one for individuals, it understands you the most, and it serves you personally."

The advantage of the network-side large model is its powerful performance, but its shortcomings are also evident: it is difficult to guarantee that user personal data or technical secrets of commercial organizations uploaded to the cloud will not be leaked. At the same time, it is difficult to achieve low-power requirements and low-latency experience in data transmission with a highly personalized, individual behavior-based, and linked to the public knowledge graph between personal terminals and the cloud. Considering data security and privacy protection, as well as the need for higher efficiency and lower costs in responding to user demands, users hope to have access to powerful general services provided by public large-scale models, while also expecting AI to truly understand them and provide personalized AI services. They also want their personal data and privacy to be fully protected.

Therefore, the hybrid deployment of public large-scale models and personal large-scale models to meet user demands has become an industry consensus, and hybrid AI is increasingly becoming a development trend for AI to better and more exclusively serve each individual.

Both Qualcomm, Lenovo, and Honor believe that by combining cloud-based public large-scale models with local large-scale models, everyone can have their own personal large-scale model, thus truly benefiting from AI. The difference among the three lies in the choice of intelligent terminal form and path. Honor focuses on individual intelligent terminals, Qualcomm is committed to providing powerful hardware devices for PCs and smartphones, and Lenovo has chosen PCs.

Different from cloud-based AI large-scale models, Honor's Magic large-scale model on the edge is based on personalized understanding and perception to complete scenario-based task loops. Its advantage lies in its ability to better learn user personal data, and individual privacy information is more secure as personal data does not leave the device or go to the cloud.

Based on this, terminals equipped with Magic OS can be seen as personalized intelligent organisms. The platform-level AI capabilities on Honor's edge side have an important feature, which is the ability to accumulate transferable, inheritable, and scalable personal knowledge bases on the edge.

With the learning and growth of edge AI in user personal data and habits, terminals equipped with Honor's Magic OS can provide deeper intent understanding and more personalized complex scenario services. On this basis, a new business ecosystem will flourish, bringing about new industry increments. Honor will also use platform-level AI to gather more Chinese strength and achieve global glory.