AI and apps frontier, Promate’s unique TripMate-GaN160 adapter, and jobs
AI within WhatsApp, that seems to be the next frontier for AI companies. I’m not talking about Meta AI, but a world that has gone much beyond.
Many of you may remember that we had analysed the very specifics of Apple’s iPhone assembly plans for India. The possibilities, costs involved and the timelines (that monumental shift is a question of when, not if). They aren’t the only ones. I spoke with OnePlus founder Pete Lau, who spoke with me about the intention for an annual investment of ₹2,000 crore every year until 2027, to boost research and development (R&D), manufacturing, and service ecosystem in the country. All part of something that’s been named rather futuristically — Project Starlight.
They have India-spec examples of innovation which have borne fruit in more markets OnePlus phones are sold in. Europe and the US, being important ones. Improvements to OxygenOS software, optimisations for battery as well as camera performance, while also developing network improvements dubbed 5.5G in sync with Reliance Jio, being examples. Lau hopes a lot more is to come from their R&D facility here, and the investments are to provide a solid ground. This will coincide with the company’s push into the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, with Lau confirming some products will be launched in the coming months. They’ll sit alongside an already wide portfolio of smartphones, tablets and wearables. There clearly is a lot to come from OnePlus, and they need to rediscover the momentum after a tough 2024 on many fronts.
Understanding definitive momentum: Samsung has already detailed a ₹1,000 crore investment in a manufacturing facility near Chennai; coincidentally, they’ve met the fifth-year target of ₹25,000 crore worth of incremental manufacturing under the smartphone Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. This, a renewed ₹22,919 crore Performance Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for electronics approved this month by the government. In January, they’d announced plans to significantly increase investments in its Indian R&D centres located in Bengaluru and Noida. These will be Samsung's largest such facilities outside South Korea, and are crucial to developing AI features. That’s where the future is headed, isn’t it?
TECH OF THE WEEK
Fast chargers are more than relevant, irrespective of a quick splash and dash for your phone’s battery at work, at home, or when travelling. Perhaps even more so, for the latter. For the globe-trotters, a typical pouch of chargers and cables must also include travel adapters too, to utilise the wall sockets, in other countries. The US/Canada (this usually is Type-B) or EU (referenced as Type C; not to be confused with USB-C) travel adapters, for instance. A convenient solution, may well be the Promate TripMate-GaN160 universal travel adapter.
The key here is, it has built-in US/UK/EU/AU/CH plugs — you simply slide them out (more on this mechanism, in a bit), plug them into the wall socket, and proceed to either use the AC socket or any of the three USB-C ports or the USB-A port. The collective output of the USB ports is rated at 160-watts, with the three USB-C ports drawing a maximum of 140-watts while depending on what else is plugged into the other ports, the USB-A tops out at 60-watts. This is alongside the 2500-watt AC socket on device, universal support itself. When I tested this extensively, including using the three USB-C (to charge three fast-charging Android phones) and the AC socket (that was to power on an Apple MacBook Pro M4) in parallel, the Promate TripMate-GaN160 only betrays some tepidness on the shell. That is as good a pointer as any, to good thermals. Charging speeds vary, with various factors in play.
The only real concern with the TripMate-GaN160 is the click to lock and click to release mechanism for the universal sockets. You must be careful when plugging this into a wall socket, and when closing any of the universal plugs after use. The release mechanism doesn’t often click properly, which could mean the connectors may break if you’re not careful.
The Promate TripMate-GaN160 is a first of its kind travel accessory, and there is an understandable premium you’ll be paying for it — the price tag for now is ₹8,999 but this versatile toolbox could be a small price to pay for the convenience of not jiggling multiple travel adapter accessories and fast chargers.
AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
AI within WhatsApp, that seems to be the next frontier for AI companies. I’m not talking about Meta AI, but a world that has gone much beyond. OpenAI, a few months ago and now Perplexity, have placed AI bots at your fingertips. The positioning of Perplexity’s WhatsApp bot is clear — fight scams and misinformation, which are rife on communication platforms such as WhatsApp. The company tells HT it is still early days in terms of sharing usage metrics or trends (but they are confident, very confident), but for a few hours a few days ago, that bot went offline purely because of the conversation load being sent its way. It came back online soon enough, and if you’re looking closely, you’ll see a trend that Perplexity’s confidence is built on.
- The fact-checking ability in particular is quite seamless, and Perplexity hopes to be useful particularly for senior citizens, in decoding the truth in messages they receive. The way to use this is simple — forward a message that you’ve received, to the Perplexity WhatsApp bot. This can include text messages, images, links or videos. Perplexity will cross-reference any claims being made, with real-time web data through search — complete with citations for the information. This will also help protect against scams, that often include malicious links, for instance.
- Perplexity WhatsApp bots supports 20 Indian languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali and Urdu. There is a likelihood that a message a user forwards to the bot, will be understood, with a response in generation.
- There are some limitations to using Perplexity within WhatsApp. It will, not play along with any news-oriented searches via WhatsApp. A least from HT’s conversations with the bot, it was perplexing stumped when we asked it to detail today’s IPL games and the current points table in that context, as an example.
This isn’t the only excitement around Perplexity. Valued at around $9 billion, Perplexity AI’s vision includes a Comet web browser that aligns with its agentic AI aspirations, Deep Research, search. As I’ve written in my column this week, the path to be bumpy, though. The browser aspirations are important, because Perplexity’s vision isn’t to compete with the web browsers we already know and use (the likes of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Brave or Vivaldi). There’s an agentic AI dream to be achieved.
It may well be a crucial early mover advantage for Perplexity, since we may see more on that front. OpenAI is believed to be working on a web browser, and if Google does have to sell Chrome depending on how the US Department of Justice antitrust scrutiny pan out, the buyer will inevitably focus on AI (Perplexity themselves have shown an interest, as has OpenAI). Personalisation and memory will play a crucial role, as Perplexity explores building user profiles based on browsing habits, purchases, and preferences to deliver tailored experiences. But this is where the question of data collection, privacy and choice comes into play — something the folks at Proton had raised on X. There is no way around it. Perplexity will have to find a balance of choice, and address inevitable user concerns. They’ve mostly been transparent in the AI journey thus far, why change track now?
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WHAT’S ON MY MIND?
Quite simply, the AGI timeline. How far are we from artificial general intelligence? The answer may be tricky, because the definition of AGI is as fluid as melting ice-cream. The rough definer may well be on the lines of an artificial intelligence system, based on versatile models, that can perform a typical task a human would be able to do melding intellect, context and adaptability, while becoming relevant in different use-cases or flows.
One could always argue we’ve seen the first hints of AGI, with the Agentic AI conversation we’ve already had, as well as the latest generation models proving to be more capable in many ways. Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, OpenAI’s GPT o3 for advanced reasoning as well as the o4-mini that was meant for advanced reasoning in a smaller, faster package are examples. The o4-mini has since spawned an o4-mini-high, which OpenAI says is primed for visual reasoning and coding. Maybe we just don’t realise AGI is amongst us (a real-world test, hidden in plain sight; of course, that's what it is), because it’s not been packaged specifically as such. But we’re getting there with reasoning and generalisation, which inevitably will lead us to autonomy that’ll define AGI.
VOICE OF REASON
It was about time someone put things in perspective. Aaron Levie, the CEO of cloud platform Box, believes AI will not take away as many jobs, as the general wisdom tends to believe. “AI lowers the barrier to getting started on anything, which means people start doing far more. But to do great work still has a long tail of execution, judgment, creativity, and knowledge about the specific domain, which means AI replaces far fewer jobs than we think,” he wrote in a post on X. There is also the medley of capabilities with building, expertise, complexity and long-term value that inevitably emerges from any AI deployment - particularly for enterprises. None has a clear answer yet, but someone simplifying things, does help build consumer confidence.
