Xiaomi crowdfunds a US$29 phone with AI assistant

Feature phones don’t have to be dumb

The Qin AI phone is scheduled to ship in mid-September. (Picture: Xiaomi/Shenzhen Qin Technology)
For all the attention we pay to smartphones, it’s easy to forget that their older siblings -- feature phones -- are alive and well. They are still used by hundreds of millions of people, and have innovated in their own ways over the years.
The Qin AI Phone -- a feature handset created by Shenzhen Qin Technology -- is now on Xiaomi’s crowdfunding platform. (Yeah, Xiaomi has a crowdfunding platform.) With less than one day to go, the project has already surpassed its funding goal of US$1,450 by a whopping 1640 times, attracting some 58,000 backers.
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