Linked List: October 5, 2016

Wednesday, 5 October 2016

Samsung Acquires Viv, a Next-Gen AI Assistant Built by Creators of Apple’s Siri ★

Matthew Panzarino, reporting for TechCrunch:

Samsung has agreed to acquire Viv, an AI and assistant system co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham — who created Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010. The three left Apple in the years after the acquisition and founded Viv in 2012. Pricing information was not available, but we’ll check around.

Viv has been billed as a more extensible, powerful version of Siri.

Viv will continue to operate as an independent company that will provide serves to Samsung and its platforms.

Huge score for Samsung. Does anyone disagree that AI assistant technology is table stakes for the next decade?

Tim Culpan: ‘HTC, You Loser’ ★

Tim Culpan, in his column for Bloomberg:

Google, of Android operating system fame, released its first Pixel smartphones Tuesday to replace its Nexus lineup. HTC has been selected to assemble the device, becoming for Google what Foxconn is to Apple. “Google has done the design work and a lot of the engineering,” the Mountain View-based company’s hardware chief Rick Osterloh told Bloomberg News.

Ouch! That’s gotta hurt. After spending years building its design and engineering chops, HTC has been demoted to water boy. Supplying Google with smartphones isn’t a victory — it’s an embarrassing end to HTC’s decade-long campaign to break out of that contract-manufacturing business and stand on its own two feet.

Android Police: ‘Huawei Passed on Chance to Produce Pixel Phones, U.S. Division Badly Struggling’ ★

David Ruddock, writing for Android Police:

Fast-forward shortly after the Nexus 5X and 6P launched, and Google began talks with Huawei to produce its 2016 smartphone portfolio - allegedly up to three phones, not just the two we ended up with. It’s unclear if they would have been branded Pixel, Nexus, or both (e.g., two Pixels and a cheaper Nexus). Google, though, set a hard rule for the partnership: Huawei would be relegated to a manufacturing role, producing phones with Google branding. The Huawei logo and name would be featured nowhere on the devices’ exteriors or in their marketing, much like the Pixel phones built by HTC that we’ll see unveiled tomorrow. According to our source, word spread inside Huawei quickly that global CEO Richard Yu himself ended negotiations with Google right then and there. Huawei was off the table for the new smartphones. Google’s “plan B” — HTC — ended up winning the contract.

It speaks to how far HTC has fallen that they’re now accepting a position akin to that of Foxconn — simply a manufacturer.

Replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Phone Catches Fire on Southwest Plane ★

Jordan Golson, reporting for The Verge:

More worryingly, the phone in question was a replacement Galaxy Note 7, one that was deemed to be safe by Samsung. The Verge spoke to Brian Green, owner of the Note 7, on the phone earlier today and he confirmed that he had picked up the new phone at an AT&T store on September 21st. A photograph of the box shows the black square symbol that indicates a replacement Note 7 and Green said it had a green battery icon.

Green said that he had powered down the phone as requested by the flight crew and put it in his pocket when it began smoking. He dropped it on the floor of the plane and a “thick grey-green angry smoke” was pouring out of the device. Green’s colleague went back onto the plane to retrieve some personal belongings and said that the phone had burned through the carpet and scorched the subfloor of the plane.

The last line of the article is a real kicker.