MWC is going on right now, and we’re all seeing some pretty interesting devices. Heck, we saw a smartphone for pets! While not designed for pets, HMD just announced a rather significant phone. At MWC, HMD announced the Fusion X1, a phone designed with AI-powered harm protection.
This is a phone that addresses children’s addiction to, well, phones. HMD conducted a massive survey including more than 25,000 parents and children to gauge how harmful constant exposure to the internet is. The numbers were pretty shocking. The Fusion X1 will target online safety, and it will use AI to do it.
HMD unveils the Fusion X1, the first phone with AI harm protection
According to the survey results, 39% of kids surveyed feel that they’re addicted to their phones. That’s a large amount, and it doesn’t account for the kids who are addicted but just don’t want to admit it. A much larger number of kids feel pressured to have a phone because their peers have one (61%).
Social media can be a prime vehicle for bullying. Well, a massive 60% of the surveyed kids report that they’ve been bullied on social media or made to feel small.
The problem extends beyond just having and using a phone; we all know the issue with predators online. 51% of the kids surveyed say that they’ve been contacted online by someone they don’t know. Scary enough, 30% of them revealed that they’ve been asked to move to private chats by strangers.
This is something that HMD wants to address. The Fusion X1 was designed to keep your child safe while using a smartphone. This phone will have built-in parental controls that will let you monitor your child’s online activity and set usage limits. It was built in collaboration with a Norwegian smartwatch company Xplora.
The Fusion X1 will differ from other phones in that it will come with controls built in on the OS level. This means that you won’t have to worry about installing third-party applications. So, the experience will be consistent no matter what app you use.
More to come
HMD is working on technology that will help keep kids safe using AI. This technology will be able to block harmful content before it can even reach your child. Ostensibly, it will detect if something is harmful and block it. We’re not sure the scope of content that it will block, but we know that it will involve harmful, illegal, and abusive content.
We don’t know much more about this technology, but we know that HMD is partnering with a company called SafeToNet for this. We should hear more about this tech in the near future. Along with that, we might hear more about the company’s newly leaked phone.
2025-03-04 15:04:37