Unless you've been living under a rock for the past two years, you're probably aware that smartphones all come with built-in AI these days -- with the option to introduce more, in the form of various chatbots and apps. But not everyone in the world has a smartphone.
In fact, many people around the world rely on dumb phones, also known as feature phones, which offer basic connectivity and features without the demanding apps and intensive compute power we associate with smartphones. But even dumb phones are more sophisticated than they used to be. Originally, they were relatively simple devices offering calling and texting over 2G -- and some still are -- but now many offer something verging on a smartphone-like experience with the benefit of a 4G connection.
But how smart can a dumb phone really be? Smart enough to run AI, say? Popular feature phone-maker HMD, which for a long time made Nokia-branded dumb phones, says yes -- and it showed me how at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.
HMD had a demo at the show with AI running on one of its 4G feature phones. To activate the phone's AI assistant, all you needed to do was select and hold its middle navigation button, and then you could ask it a question, such as, "What will the weather be like in Barcelona tomorrow?" to engage with the chatbot.
Unlike cutting-edge smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra Leica that pack the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon chips capable of running on-device AI, a feature phone will have to process all AI-based queries in the cloud. That means it won't be as instantaneous as you might be used to, but a strong 4G connection will result in minimal time delay. In the demo I saw, it took only about 5 seconds to answer my weather query, which I didn't think was too shabby.
When HMD starts introducing AI on feature phones in the coming months, it will use a range of large language models. In Europe, it will rely on OpenAI's ChatGPT, in China, it will use DeepSeek, and in India, the company has a partnership with Sarvam AI. (HMD pulled out of the US market last year.)
To access the AI assistant you long press the central navigation key. Katie Collins/CNET
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
Many of the people who rely on HMD's feature phones live in low-income regions where that phone might be the only device in the household, said Ming Li, HMD's global head of marketing, during our MWC demo. In these regions, the profound negative impacts of the existing digital divide is only likely to be exacerbated by the fact that people are cut off from using AI. For some people, a dumb phone that's able to run AI might be their first and only access to a technology that many of us take for granted.
HMD's AI tools are basic, but might be people's first and only experience the technology. Katie Collins/CNET
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