Opening thoughts. I thought Carl Pei has his finger on the pulse. He mostly does, but perhaps not always. Pei, speaking at this year’s SXSW, insists smartphone apps will be replaced by AI agents. “In terms of AI in software, I think people should understand that apps are going to disappear. So, if you’re a founder or a startup and your app is like where the core value lies, that will be disrupted whether you like it or not.”
Pei has talked about an AI device earlier, basically a focused smartphone, just ahead of the $200 million Series C funding round in September last year. He also believes that current AI agents, which tend to show off some level of supremacy with booking flight tickets and hotel reservations, are “super boring”.
A device that would do things without needing a command, is his vision of an AI-first smartphone. Glad we have that cleared up.
EDITOR’S CORNER — The Forever Galaxy
Samsung’s done something rather interesting in India. There is a new ‘Galaxy Forever’ ownership model subscription plan (this costs ₹749.92 per month for one year) and begins with the Galaxy S26 Ultra and Galaxy S26 Plus for now. What Samsung says is this—subscribe to this plan, buy a new Galaxy S26 Ultra and Galaxy S26 Plus at 50% off on a 12-month, no-cost EMI plan. Here are two forks after 12 months.
If a buyer used a credit card for the EMI plan, they will be able to collect 50% assured buyback directly if they don’t wish to keep the phone further, or retain the device and pay the balance 50% through additional 12 no-cost EMIs.
Those who opted for Samsung Finance+ can do a quick swap and upgrade to the next Galaxy flagship smartphone (expected to be released by then, of course), or can retain the device by paying the balance 50% in the 13th month.
Samsung says the Galaxy Forever plan also includes Samsung Care+ (this covers Accidental and Liquid Damage Protection with zero deductibles) worth ₹13,999 for 13 months.
Samsung’s partners for this are DMI Finance and Servify, for the complete chain of financing, service, processing returns as well as upgrades.
Here’s an illustrative cost of buying a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra with the Galaxy Forever plan. The actual price starts ₹1,39,999 but you’ll be paying ₹69,999 for this phone for the first 12 months. That works out to ₹5,833.29 each month plus the Galaxy Forever fee of ₹749.92 as well.
The Galaxy Forever plan is quite interesting, for two main reasons.
- First, it significantly slashes the upfront cost of buying a Samsung flagship smartphone, and therefore negates the very-real financial stumbling block for many potential buyers.
- Secondly, this will help retain users, and build that crucial loyalty by the time the next flagship comes around.
TECH SPOTLIGHT — Qubo Dashcams
A dashcam is an absolute must-have, the way our roads are and road user behaviour continues to deteriorate. I say this as someone who has been using dashcams for years now, as a layer of visual proof for safety.
Qubo, a Hero Group venture, has in my book, really improved the overall dashcam quality and experience. A lot of it has had to do with the smartphone app upgrades, but the new Qubo Dashcam 4G Live and the Qubo Dashcam Trio point to a hardware leap as well.
The Dashcam 4G Live ( ₹6,990) retains a design very similar to some of its predecessors—the impressive Dashcam Pro 2K and the Dashcam Pro X. The video recording resolution is 2K and low-light performance is good enough to be able to read number plates of vehicles ahead of you, in the glare of headlights at night.
The most important upgrade has to be the SIM card slot, which connects to 4G mobile networks (it can be a 5G SIM, but will connect to 4G). This gives the dash cam its own layer of connectivity even when it isn’t connected to your smartphone via Wi-Fi. That means, remote access to footage in the dashcam’s memory card, live streaming of the car’s driving footage as well as cloud backup.
For now, Qubo bundles one-year worth of premium subscription for cloud storage for critical events or remote-viewing functionality, and that’s a genuine value addition— and it’ll cost ₹1,499 annually from the second year onwards. Secondly, depending on driving and remote access, expect the Dashcam 4G Live to use between 300 MB to 1 GB of data every month (choose a prepaid or postpaid plan accordingly).
The premium Qubo Dashcam Trio ( ₹10,990) may be a genuine choice for vehicles that are often driven by a chauffeur, fleet vehicles or for anyone who wants a wider safety envelope of visual proof. The trio in this case, as the name suggests, is a front camera with a 4-MP sensor for 2K video recording resolution, a rear camera that does Full HD 1080p resolution and a cabin camera that is also Full HD. Much like the Dashcam 4G Live, this also supports memory cards up to with 1 TB storage.
Unlike the 4G variant, the Qubo Dashcam Trio has a simpler, on-device usability foundation where the phone and the camera must communicate directly to extract footage from the memory card, for instance. The front camera’s recoding capabilities are impressive, and the different design means it also has a rather usable 3.16-inch LCD display integrated for quicker navigation and viewing of instances recorded. This is a convenience most dashcams don’t have now, and I often fondly refer to my much older Transcend dashcam experience for that.
The rear camera, a value-added convenience, gives that wholesome visual proof of any unfortunate incident on the road. It can often stumble if the car driving behind you have bright lights in the cold white temperature (often after-market accessories; extremely annoying) and the number plate becomes unreadable in such moments.
SECOND THOUGHTS — A Metaverse like it never existed?
In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced to the world that a tech company otherwise well-known as Facebook would be rebranding to Meta Platforms Inc. Why? Because he believed virtual reality was the next big thing, changed the logo to the new Meta one, and began to pump money into the insistence.
In 2022, Meta spent around $15 billion on Reality Labs to create avatars for the metaverse (without legs, for quite some time) and metaverse meeting rooms (often empty, but we were told it’s still early days). Excitable headlines pushed Zuckerberg’s claim that a billion people will be in the metaverse soon enough.
In 2023, he spent another $16 billion, but avatars still didn’t have legs. Meta’s stock crashed. In 2024, the world began to talk about AI. Meta also began to talk about AI, hoping the world will forget about the metaverse.
After splurging around $80 billion between 2020 and 2025, Meta has announced that the Horizons World app—a 3D VR social-media platform and a crucial cog of the meta dreams—will no longer be available on Quest headsets from June this year. It’ll remain a “mobile-only” experience for now, on smartphones.
And then there’s the spectre of what Samantha Ryan (vice president – content at Reality Labs) called a “renewed vision” last month. The company will still focus on VR, but in a different way and with a different platform that they say will be better for app developers.
“We heard your feedback loud and clear, and after a year of collecting data and running experiments, we agree. We’re removing individual worlds from our store shelves in VR, and we’re separating worlds from the Store in our mobile app. This change should result in more impressions for apps on the store,” Ryan had said at the time. “We want to make Quest a better home for developers all around. We’ll double down on our focus on software quality and make it easier to build with us. We’re committed to improving platform quality and stability as we go.”
Wired Wisdom peels away the glitz for a closer look at Technology & AI, with the hope to critically analyse how it impacts you — the human. Want this newsletter delivered into your inbox? Subscribe here.
