Turing Phone Appassionato set for release (and too much hype?)

Turing Robotic Industries (TRI) made headlines a while back when it shipped the Turing Phone, being made out of LiquidMorphium or liquid-metal of sorts. Now, the company has announced the Turing Phone Appassionato, being created in partnership with TCL.

And the company is promising an awful lot of stuff for the new phone, making us question just how much we’ll see in the final product.

For one, the LiquidMorphium design is in, with TRI calling it the world’s first mass-produced LiquidMorphium smartphone. To be fair, the company shipped the original Turing Phone with this material too, albeit in limited numbers.

The company also says the new phone will have “amplified intelligence” working in concert with a “dedicated enhanced-concierge service” called Sir Alan.

TRI says that amplified intelligence sees AI being used to supplement human intelligence in making choices. In other words, the combination sounds an awful lot like every virtual assistant out there right now. But the firm insists that Sir Alan is different, of course.

The Turing Phone Appassionato sports a virtual assistant and a liquid metal design

“TRI’s Appassionato leapfrogged passive voice command search tools of existing smartphones. Inspired by the work of American engineer and inventor Douglas C. Engelbart, TRI will advance amplified intelligence by incorporating the latest developments in AI and in human enhanced-concierge capabilities,” said Syl Chao, CEO of TRI, in a statement.

“The TRI enhanced-concierge service, ‘Sir Alan’, works in conjunction with an AI interpretation engine to jointly provide finely tuned, relevant lifestyle and business recommendations for Appassionato users.”

As for the design and specs of the Turing Phone Appassionato?

“The avant-garde Turing Phone Appassionato builds upon the success of its forebears by not only being constructed of Liquidmorphium but also featuring diamond-like-carbon coating (DLC), which provides a high-tech ceramic feel and a scratch resistant surface. The new device will protect the user’s information through TRI’s robust mobile defense platform fully integrated into the Android 7.1.1 OS powered by Qualcomm MSM8996SG-AC SoC [a Snapdragon 821 chip – ed].”

An expensive proposition

Other specs, such as RAM, storage space and the cameras, haven’t been revealed though, but we do see a fingerprint scanner on the back.

Still interested in the smartphone? Well, it’s scheduled to launch in September, in the form of the “elite edition” Turing Phone Appassionato PX8 and the “premium-luxury edition” Turing Phone Appassionato GX8. These devices have a price tag of US$1099 and US$1599 respectively.

We’re pretty skeptical about the phone though, given the company’s lofty claims in September. It released information for a so-called Turing Phone Cadenza, claiming two Snapdragon 830 (before the name change to Snapdragon 835) processors and a smartphone platform with a deep learning focus.

Nevertheless, we’d like to be pleasantly surprised…