Last night OPPO held a local launch event for its latest smartphone – the Reno12 Pro 5G.
The device is notable for a few reasons, but one of the most important is that it is the first AI Phone that the company has officially launched in South Africa. It will also be the first in a slew of devices to tout AI-powered capabilities, with OPPO even planning to have 50 million devices globally running this new feature set by the end of 2025.
Helping OPPO achieve this are a handful of high-profile partners – namely Google, Microsoft, MediaTek, and Qualcomm. With a few other Android phone makers having introduced AI-powered phones into the market, how will OPPO’s version differ?
This is something we asked OPPO South Africa’s head of training, Bradley Young at the aforementioned event.
Unpacking what the OPPO AI Phone experience will be underpinned by, Young explained that, “Right now the functions that have gone live on the phone are more focused on the fun elements. The AI Eraser, the Image Matting. I think it’s an easier way to get the customer involved without it getting too serious and just warming them up to the AI functions.”
“As we develop and going into the next couple of weeks and months, there’s a whole series of AI functions that we are going to release. One of them, the update for AI Summary, arrived pretty much yesterday. The ability to record long meetings or sessions and automatically generate summaries because you may not want to listen to the entire thing is an example of a more functional application,” he pointed out.
One of the other AI Phone elements that OPPO fans should be on the lookout for is AI Toolbox, which will allow users to activate a smart sidebar in order to summarise or dictate web pages, so there is more on the cards from the company over the coming months.
“I’m really looking forward to some of the applications that will be able to add additional support, like text input, so if I’m trying to figure out how to construct a message, AI will be able to plug in and help me with it,” he enthused.
The training manager was also quick to acknowledge the fact that while other brands have launched on-device AI with similar functions and features, there are still differences in terms of what OPPO will offer.
“I think there will be overlap. What I would like to say is that the datasets that are being fed into AndesGPT by the functions we are using provide a faster and smoother experience from what we’ve seen,” Young shared.
“Not only are we working with AndesGPT to implement the data side of things for devices, but we have a great partnership with Google to deliver on the language model-based features. We are going to have some overlap, but what we’re focusing on is making things faster cleaner, simpler, and more fun for the people using it,” he continued.
Like Samsung and Galaxy AI, OPPO will look to feature its AI Phone suite on future devices, starting with the Reno12 Pro 5G. In the coming weeks the Reno12FS 5G will also support it at launch, along with the Reno12 F 4G, although was careful to note that the latter device may be a little slower compared to the other models, especially as it does not boast as powerful a chipset. That said, it will still support the same features as the rest of the 12 series.
Moving forward, new A series devices launched in South Africa are also expected to support OPPO AI, Young confirmed, although he could not point to specific models at the time of writing. He also said that OPPO is assessing the viability of rolling out its AI suite to older models that have been launched in SA prior to the Reno12 series.
“On the box you will see it say ‘OPPO AI Phone’, so the devices will definitely be demarcated to give customers a clear idea of what it’s capable of,” he added.
When asked about any limitations or restrictions in terms of the functionality of features like AI Eraser, Young acknowledged that any concerns consumers may have for nefarious use of such features for manipulating media are warranted.
“Questions like whether it (images for AI Eraser) needs to be captured on the phone have been answered, and it does not need to be captured with the phone… There’s nothing currently outlined to stop people from abusing the feature,” he said.
“As we head forward, there’s going to be something that will raise alarms, and there will need to be something that is put in place,” Young emphasised regarding industry collaboration on AI usage standards.
While we await for regulators to catch up to the pace at which consumer-focused AI is developing, it looks like OPPO wants to be a part of the conversation, and for South African fans of the brand it now has a device to do just that with the Reno12 Pro 5G.
