Hey folks! As promised in the video, including a few responses here from Humane co-founder Bethany Bongiorno: MESSAGING: "The messaging experience is definitely not full featured yet - and doesn't match your smartphone just yet given its maturity. We do have a good number of fixes coming very soon." OVERHEATING / DROPPING CALLS AFTER 30 MIN: "This should be hours. It can be impacted by thermal headroom at the start, other experiences running, laser usage during call and poor cellular connectivity. There are improvements here in the next release that will make where we are now much better." GENERAL AI RESPONSE ACCURACY: "Accuracy improvements will continue to be a priority and changes will be pushed to CosmOS every day and we will also be adding things like Agents in the next release which will expand capabilities of general web search in a way to help with some of these type of questions." CELLULAR RECEPTION: "The device’s antennas are built into the housing for optimal performance. That being said, the larger a device, the easier it is for the antenna to radiate, specifically at lower frequencies. The Ai Pin performs quite well, comparable to some smartphones in the mid and high band frequencies, and slightly worse than smartphones in low bands. We perform better than all smartwatches that are comparable in size that we measured." GENERAL: "We definitely know there are certain things that are not where we want them to be in 1.0, as with all first gen products, but we do have a lot of improvements that are getting pushed to Cosmos on the server every few days to improve them and have a lot of device side fixes and new features in our next release that we think will make things better. "
It’s good that they responded to you and I think they have the best answers they can provide. I don’t think this device should’ve been marketed as a first gen release, however. I know we joke that first gen products in tech is like hardware beta testing, but this is hardware alpha testing. This is hardware pre-production testing. It’s a cool idea and I love the vision, but this feels like it has even less of a place in the industry than the Vision Pro. This feels like it should’ve been something you only receive for paying the highest Kickstarter tier to be an unpaid QA tester. Still. I don’t want the company to fail. I’m hopeful that they can make improvements through software and that future products and generations are better. Great review as always MrMobile! I love how you always stay neutral and treat the bad equally to the good, even when it’s something you really love.
I don’t understand why these companies have gotten so comfortable putting out beta software/hardware out for sale. Very frustrating to buy a device with limited functionality only to receive the good ole “we’ll fix it eventually with an OTA”
The thing is I'm not sure they can actually fix these problems with software updates. Mostly it seems that the big issue it's just that it's too small to be able to have enough capacity to go the whole day.
I bet the plan isn't to sell to customers but to sell to investors. Because uuUUUuuU, look at our press coverage, this is the next big thing, the smartphone killer, and it has AI!
The device uses whatever AI services and APIs are available and tested. They are not going to develop a chatGPT API for interacting with your google calendar, that's years of development to make it work properly.
Most third party calendar apps can literally access Google Calendar or even MS exchange's calendar through a syncing protocol that has been around for decades. That an AI can't do this out of the box is mind blowing.
@@madelineariah Great! Now, which of those third party calendar apps took less than 2 years of software development? The "AI" doesn't do anything out of the box, you need to train it and provide input and output for inference. The inputs and outputs still need software development and integration.
@@PaulSpades "It takes a long time to develop" is not an excuse for skipping right past that development and jumping straight into selling it for $700 minimum plus a monthly subscription. Calendar functionality is arguably the single most fundamental feature for a personal assistant to have, and claiming it just takes too long to integrate here is either a condemnation of the technology at its base or the company choosing to release this thing.
@@sethsez I completely agree. Which is why I think the Rabbit R1 is a better product if you're interested in this sort of thing. They started with a solution to the software and API problem. How well it works is still to be determined.
It’s 20 years too late AI or not it feels like something out of the early to mid 2000’s tech boom with things like the lipstick phones password journals and robo pets. Cool concept shore but there’s no reason for Joe and Jain on the street to actually use it. Secondly the smartphone is idk a thing and has been since 2010 with wide spread adoption. The days of a small digital cameras a dedicated iPod/mp3 player phone torch are long gone. In a way outing the AI pin in the same basket as the Sony Vaio P (aka full win XP machine roughly the size of a galaxy fold) As amazing as the Vaio P was it was realised at the cusp of the smartphone which killed the project and product line
The AI Still Dumb as Fk, very Frustrating to use. They're unreliable and uncertain, like what they gonna do to improve that? they're using GPT-4, are they gonna Threaten OpenAI Sam Altman to fix their AI because apparently people get lost, some people missed their appointment, basically they're just sitting duck at the mercy of Sam Altman this is the only thing that could justify their existence, but they failed at that.
What incredible build quality for manufactured e-waste. You know what else is neat? Smartwatches. Seriously, what's wrong with smartwatches? You're still gonna have to lug a phone around with this damned pin anyway.
Not even good build quality when the battery life is non-existent, the signal strength is woeful, and they couldn’t even get ip68 on a device with zero ports.
A very grounded review with optimism for the device, but realism to acknowledge that 80-90% of us won’t buy this for various reasons. For me, the price + subscription combo is the dealbreaker. But hearing how much this thing gets wrong or the frustration of trying to do basic things. Definitely sounds like one would be better off waiting for a potential sequel device.
@@Matanumi it’s a cost for the cell service for unlimited calls and texts. It makes sense, but on top of the $700 USD price tag, it’s a non-starter for sure.
@TJKoopa3018 it makes sense as an option, but the fact you can't just tether of your phone is bs. Obviously thus subscription is in place to cover the cost of using the AI, the AI that works like shit
it is much worse though. It isnt directly competing to a smartwatch given it is not a companion device rather it is competing directly to a smartphone.
Your review is very level headed, And I like how you don't entirely throw the idea under the bus while you still clearly bring across your criticisms of it. I feel the same sorta cautious optimism for this as type of thing
That point of not wanting to be rescued from a phone but being interested in these gadgets because they are doing something new is a good way to put it. I've never felt addicted or shackled to my phone in a way these gadgets aim to fix so I've never been drawn to them in that way but I still like seeing them do new things and reinvent certain systems in novel ways.
I agree! I have an iPhone, I have hundreds of apps, I use it for everything-BUT-I don’t think a second piece of tech is going to somehow lessen what I do on my phone. It’s just offloading that activity onto another piece of tech. I’d rather just take my phone out than figure out if I should look at my phone… or my watch… or my pin etc. etc. However, I appreciate anyone trying out anything different, because you never know how parts of what they invent could be repurposed in the future. A simple example would be the coloured LED to indicate an alert. If a different coloured dot appeared on the back of my iPhone while it was face down on a table in a meeting I would know if I needed to even pick it up. My old BlackBerry had an LED that lit up different colours that I could customize depending on what the alert was about. That was so useful and something Humane put on the pin, because it’s simple and maintains privacy while being really functional.
You did a much better presentation than Humane company itself. This should be the presentation way that they should follow. Atleast this review video sparked some intrest in the device.
The founders in the Humane promo video seemed like hostages being forced to read a script. I was waiting for one of them to hold up a newspaper as a proof of life. It goes to show that 99% of founders and CEOs should *not* be the public faces for their companies. Steve Jobs was an engaging public speaker, but unfortunately he made it look so easy that now every tech co founder thinks they’re like him. They’re usually wrong.
Man, what an elegant way of reviewing a product that is not ready. This was a master class about how to present a product that clearly is not yet ready for mainstream distribution while not being a naysayer, and understanding that products need time to mature. Great job.
Yeah, this feels like someone just wanted to put a start up together so they could cash out by selling it so they latched onto whatever the latest tech bro buzzword was to push a product that really doesn’t need to exist because it’s just an objectively worse experience than a smart watch, which does everything this thing can and more, and does it better
@@MoonBro96 Agreed, this thing is 100% a solution in search of a problem hoping that buzzwords and a novel gimmick will convince one of the big boys to buy out the company. None of this is actually aimed at the end user. Customers are incidental.
I know it was short-lived, but I still love my Echo Loop. It's a perfectly usable way of discreetly interacting with a voice assistant. You can whisper questions or commands, and have to hold the ring to your ear to hear the response so it's fairly private.
The moment I saw your review was up I tapped to view it, this was a great and full review about the Ai pin by humane. It's a very interesting gadget but I think what a lot of us want is an ai assistant that is present and available no matter the hardware we're interacting with, meaning, it should work on my laptop, pc, phone, earbuds and smartwatch, and is capable of reading to you from the services you use like calendar, mail, make notes (fcol) messages,etc. pretty much what we see on the movie "Her". This pin or badge form factor has its merits, thinking of it as an accessory for my daily life, most of the time it wouldn't be very useful except when I'm walking on the street, excercising or traveling, but in these moments I would also be using earbuds which could provide most of the functionality except the camera with my pov. Idk, maybe if ai was more advanced and this could work more like a modern star trek badge and actually replace a smartphone, this could be useful, but at the moment it just feels like we're all just waiting for smartglasses and/or ai to get better or be more useful
It's unfortunate that this device is in the state it is in at launch, but this is the first review I saw that helped me see the potential of a device like this. Thank you for trying to take a more open approach to your review on this. Most reviewers were very down on it. (Perhaps understandably so)
Wearing a smartwatch backwards offers more functionality than the laser projector. Or just wear it normally. Then connecting Bluetooth earbuds (or even without those) solves most of the text reading and replying. Google assistant solves a lot of the searching issues (not that I like it, just saying).
yea but unfortunately that doesn't make it a device I'd really want to use.. The screen offered by my phone just comes with way too many benefits to ditch it for something like this. Just the camera alone, really! but what if I wanna text without announcing my conversation to the room?
So, what exactly does this pin currently do at launch that a smartwatch cannot do better? Notifications, calls, texts, search, fitness tracking, note taking, etc, are all easier to do on my smartwatch that I can also talk to. The only thing I can think of that the pin does that I can't do with my smartwatch is photos and video clips, and I'd rather have a viewfinder to see exactly what the device is capturing, so I would rather use my phone anyway.
@@kshadehyaena It looks like a mix of wireless charging and a pin contact point. Regardless, you are right on the money. It's inefficient. And it could very much benefit from silicon carbon technology instead of the last gen lithium ion that I'm pretty sure it has.
It really is not. Theranos was never real, and nothing that the company ever promised was true. Humane delivered an actual product that at least does something. It obviously doesn't do most things well, but comparing it to a product that was never real to begin with is unreasonable.
IMO they have the right idea, which is making AI something you can physically interact with on its own, but the problem is everything Humane is doing can already be done with AI on everyone's smartphones WITHOUT a subscription
Mr. Mobile is the go to reviewer for obscure products like these! This was a fun video despite the devices current shortcomings. Looking forward to how these types of devices progress
Mike sold my folks a set of Cutco knives sometime in the nineties and we still use them when we visit the little summer cottage! Good dude and has always been very curious and entrepreneurial Tony from the North Fork says hi
Glad someone is able to look at all these gimmick devices before the servers are shut off next year from lack of adoption. Its mostly just fascinating to see why anyone though this was a good idea
I feel this and Vision Pro are solutions looking for problems. My biggest issue with both those products (but especially this one) is I can't really identify what it does. Every product category I can think of (smartphone, computer, etc.) always has that one niche or way or doing something that is either unique or better than another method. A practical example if something like CarPlay/Android Auto: I can be driving, and my phone can tell me about traffic issues and redirect me. It recognizes an actual problem and offers a solution. A good, practical use of technology. This pin? I guess the laser thing is kind of neat, but it's not a killer app. It's not something that is so good or unique it makes me want to buy it. Unless this product carves out a niche and/or does something unquestionably better than any other method, I just don't see this catching on.
You are the reason i have a Flip 5 (and 3 before that) and now the Galaxy Watch6 Classic. I trust you. You have earned that over the years. It would have been easy to gloss over all the issues here and just get lost in the AI madness, but as always, your integrity won the day. Thanks again Mr Fisher.
No thanks. I dont like devices that makes me talk to it as its primary mode of interaction, no matter how great it is, talking with your things is always going to be awkward technically and/or socially. And all this AI stuff its... too much now.
I’m happy to be proved wrong, but I don’t see a world where this would replace anything. The phone is a distraction, but it’s a quiet one that I can use in any situation (plane, train, bus, doctors office…). Having the primary mode of interaction be your voice is a massive deal breaker. We already have voice assistants I don’t use. And the cost vs limitations of this device is astonishing. Tacking on AI resources doesn’t bridge that gap.
I feel the same way about Vision Pro. I like to be fair and give new products time to find their place, because it does happen. But both this and Vision Pro I just don't "get." The main thing is I can understand the use case for a laptop. And a smartphone. And a smart watch. But I don't get what these products are doing for me. What problems do these solve I can't accomplish with my phone? What is the killer app? What does this do that simply cannot be replicated in some other way, and be practical? I feel products like this and Vision Pro need to answer those questions. There needs to be something so good, so unique, that I MUST use the AI Pin. But I'm not seeing that. This feel like a solution looking for a problem.
If I’m honest. I didn’t expect the AI pin to work well when you show cased it at that tech demo. But I like it for an experiment. Yes it’s not perfect. But it shows where we are right now with the tech available! And it’s a good bench mark to start developing from. Personally I’m still waiting for AR specs and headsets for my next big tech purchase. But this stuff excites me!
1. What the hell do you mean "don't get dumpling splatter on it or else it will never come on", for this price I expect it to survive at least that much. 2. The moment the company goes under, which it will the moment the hype dies down and seed funding dries out, it's gonna be just a really gaudy button. 3. Even if I'm alone at home, I really don't want to be talking to my devices (I only use my Google Assistant to set a timer for my noodles), just because it feels weird, and most of the time the precise thing I want to do I can simply use my fingers for it in a split second.
I knew this pin wouldn't be good enough to recommend from what I'd already seen and heard. But I do get what you mean about wanting to follow the project through. It is a really good and ambitious idea, IF they can overcome the many hurdles laid in front of them. They really shouldn't have launched it in the state it's in now, as that alone could turn enough people away to doom it. But hopefully it gets enough people curious for them to push forward.
They probably had to release it to "prove" it was a real product. If they never released it, it might get deemed vaporware and not get any future funding. This is very much a beta product (at best), but at least it does exist. Which is better than a lot of other tech products that never get released.
For everybody who disses this. It is not great - true. But we need unique tech failures to get to groundbreaking successes. It is always better to learn from somebody elses mistakes, especially if those mistakes cost millions just to try something new.
Poor battery life for wearables is practically inexcusable, since multiple manufacturers cracked multi day use in smartwatches with a smaller formfactor than this thing (especially the pin+battery backing). That said, this thing is still interesting to follow. A smartwatch is not always practical to do actual stuff on, as it requires two handed (hand the watch is on is pretty much useless when the other is interacting with it) operation for most stuff. This requires only one hand sometimes, the other hand can do laundry indeed. Too bad also they lock the thing down so much for privacy reasons. The placement on the chest could make it the perfect placement for a semi-inconspicuous bodycam or audio recorder. There are legitimate reasons to do this inconspicuously sometimes for conversations with importance, with corrupt superiors or law enforcement. A 15 second video doesn't do much then.
You what is funny about the messaging? Microsoft did it 10 years ago! Lolz! Cortana on my Lumia 530 actually worked well for this purpose. I used to use it when I was at work, I had my music on it and it would pause what I was listening to in order to let me know I got a message and then ask what I wanted to do, one option was to reply, I dictated my reply, she read it back and then I could just send it, all in 2014. To me all we really need is more functionality added to BT headphones and voice only commands. Once you start adding screens and such you really are just better off dragging your phone out.
Microsoft also did the tablet PC a good decade before Apple "invented" it with the iPad. Microsoft has lots of trouble connecting with the masses, but they always seem to have been well ahead of the curve. Back in the early 90s you could get full-fledged handwriting recognition on Windows 3 with special pen software. There was a tablet from 1992 running Win3 that was basically the iPad + Apple Pencil.
I really enjoyed tour review. It seems balanced and fair and thorough. Your script and delivery was also very well done. Thank you very much. I'll check out a few more of your videos. (this was my first)
The voice used sounds like a sad Cindy Pom from the RU-vid channel Newsthink, 😉 LOL, great review. Interesting, with a lot of issues but it's a first gen product so let's see how they improve in the future.
The form factor is wrong; this should be a watch and earbud combo, the projector is a nice idea but impractical and there’s a socially-imposed limit to “talking to yourself”, voice commands alone won’t cut it.
Great idea, bad execution. Glad they are trying but lord we are more than a few tech generations away from this being usable. Come back in 5 years and we may have the first real public use version
The lag of the voice interface and how long it takes you to tell you the (iffy) answer gives me throwback vibes to WAP browsing on a candybar phone. S L O O O W ... with underwhelming outputs. If the Pin is going to tell me "I can't do that" then tell me *instantly*, don't make me wait 5-10 seconds to fail out.
I watched Eddy Burback's video on the Vision Pro yesterday, and as weird, niche, and dissociative as that $3,500+ device seems, it sounds like a bargain when compared to this $699+ piece of largely functionless garbage.
I think they’re on the right track. I often think about body cameras. There should be an affordable option out there for people to buy that they can discreetly wear on their clothing to record different situations. They should also include a button that you can hit on the side that will automatically dial 911. These days living in New York, or Los Angeles are not very safe.
Every time I see this thing I think to myself “my Apple Watch can do this”, or even, you know, a phone can do all of this. If there’s anything that this product does for me is make me want to wear my Apple Watch again, because a watch being able to do so many things on its own is very cool.
OMG ! If there is one Tech RU-vidr that can review this properly, it's our Michael ! Love that it comes with clip, and magnet, not the literal needle to pin. 1:54 - that is also a time -travel controler, right ? right ? It has to be. 3:43 - was wondering if it does, thanks for adressing that 4:31 - no audio notes for you, buy upgrade pack for 499, 99 4:51 - laser ? He said LASER ? There are lasers in this ? It is a murder pin that Sarah Connor warned us about ? 6:20 - let me in.jpg 7:53 - ground shaking news 9:24 - omg, custom blend ! 12:15 - come on ! It's the future we were supposed to have anyway ! Speak through it ! Speak through it NAOW ! 14:37 - aww , poor pin 15:55 - yay, small step for a pin is a huge step for a mankind !
As I just commented on the MrWhosetheboss review, I love how you are both so honest to the point of usually being brutally honest about a product. As I also had said in his video comments, this product is half baked and only in Alpha stage as far as I'm concerned.
As a huge Star Trek geek I am in awe. As a buyer, there is not an adventage as a phone replacment, just because the laser projector is not good enough. A big tec company should pic this up.
I'm excited to see where devices like this can go, but until we have a full fledged com badge, I'm not sure it's some for me. Fantastic video and really dig the jackets.
This will by far be the #1 ai pin review. But I canceled mine shortly after ordering it. It's too expensive and I can't support any more subscription models. My Rabbit will be here soon tho :)
Most useful use for this would be when used to record police misconduct. I.e if there is a future version where it can be set to always record video and audio. There could be a market for such a device.
i really don't like these assistants because I don't want to have to talk out loud to make every search? idk am I crazy? I never want to say words to my google assistant if I really need it I will type on it. especially in public.
This should be an accessory for your already powerful smartphone. I really like what humane is doing. They are taking chances and steps. Maybe not in the right direction though. People are going to be adamant about having to pay for a plan to even use the device, when they already have one on their much more powerful smartphone. The fact... that if you don't have a mobile plan for the device, renders it completely useless is iffy. It should use both Wi-Fi and mobile networks. That way you can use it without having to have a mobile subscription. Pair it with your smartphone and this could have some huge potential.
![MrMobile [Michael Fisher]](http://yt3.ggpht.com/Bf8B_79jyHxP6CVnjV5WKws93l9Vxlk0d7aPmcBygTBDKzgsGrpazdJRFUrfg1sUNlo8YX8rji8=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj)