Newnal's AI Phone: Creating Digital Clones and Raising Privacy Concerns at MWC 2025

MWC 2025: This AI Phone Can Replace You With a Digital Clone

When visiting a trade show like the MWC, you are bound to see some companies try out-of-the-box ideas to gather attention and press coverage. That was the trend this year too with phone cameras that can latch on to DSLR lenses, or a triple folding flip phone. However, one device that went under the radar is Newnal's AI phone, which creates a digital clone of you. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, with AI being able to pull off all sorts of stuff. But the Newnal AI device takes as much information about you as possible. This includes your medical and financial records, from past and present, and trains on your data. This data is then securely broken and uploaded to cloud servers. So only you should be able to access it in theory. But what does it do with all this data? Well, it creates a virtual AI assistant using your facial features and voice. It is dubbed your "Another-I". This Another-I resides in its own tiny dedicated screen at the top of the Newnal phone. You can bring it up using the square button on the side. Like Gemini or Siri, it can perform typical AI stuff like drafting emails and such. The point where it gets trippy is that it can also get car insurance for you. Yes, I am not making it up. Down to picking up the insurance, filling up your details, and even paying for it. It can complete the process without your intervention while showing each step, and showing each source for the information. I can't get a grip on how I feel about this Newnal AI. The founder of Newnal AI, YT Kim, previously developed a blockchain-powered vaccine verification system in Korea, which is still widely used. The company is based in Korea, and it has published extensive documentation and technical details to help you understand how it processes your data. The phone that performs all the AI trickery is a little device with a separate screen that runs a mix of Newnal's OS and Android. According to Kim, the company is hoping to launch the Newnal AI phone globally on May 1. It will go on sale for $375 which is frankly quite cheap. Almost about the same price as the recently announced Nothing Phone (3a). That being said, I still feel quite uneasy about an AI having so much authority to make purchases on my behalf. Plus, we know the technology is pretty well known for hallucinating. So what if it enters the wrong details, causing more damage than it aims to solve? This is beside the fact that it has so many details on you. And having an AI avatar of you sitting at the top of the phone screen talking to you in your voice. You can't fault me for being a little too skeptical here. Apart from this, it can also help you find the right pair of sunglasses based on your upcoming events and trip plans. It can even answer calls on your behalf, like Google's call screening. The biggest question of all this is, if it can do everything for me, then what am I supposed to do? These are the baffling questions I was left with when after taking a look at the Newnal AI phone at MWC. What do you think about this prototype smartphone? Let us know in the comments.

This Strange AI Smartphone Digitally Clones You

Samantha Kelly is a freelance writer with a focus on consumer technology, AI, social media, Big Tech, emerging trends and how they impact our everyday lives. Her work has been featured on CNN, NBC, NPR, the BBC, Mashable and more. A quirky new mobile operating system, claiming to tease the future of AI on smartphones, popped up at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. South Korea-based startup Newnal showed off mobile software that uses both your past and current data to create a personalized AI assistant. But here's the twist: The AI intends to be... you. It looks like you, acts like you, learns from you, and even grows old like you. The blockchain-based operating system accesses apps and personal accounts, such as Instagram and Gmail, to create a personalized knowledge graph, essentially learning everything about you. According to the company, this is then used to create a personalized AI avatar that can respond and act just like you would. Unlike other popular AI models such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini, Newnal said in a press release that its users own and train the Web3 AI Newnal OS on their data instead of what's on the internet, so no two user experiences are the same. The operating system is blockchain-based and encrypted, open-sourced and can be embedded on any device, the company said. The model "flips the script on less rigorous privacy models by putting the individual user in full, flexible control of their data," a company rep told CNET in an email. To demo the technology at MWC 2025 -- which also featured foldable devices, ultraslim phones and camera concepts -- the company added the technology to its own proprietary mobile devices. As seen in a video that the tech site Android Authority shared on X, the top of the display features the AI avatar at the top, with the bottom reserved for traditional smartphone tasks, like social media, shopping and email. Although details are still slim and Newnal's concept appears far-reaching, it could hint at what's ahead for AI on mobile devices. "They are gimmicks to the extent that they amaze in the capabilities demonstrated within a highly controlled environment, but when you take them on any kind of robust road test, they implode," said Dipanjan Chatterjee, an analyst at Forrester Research, drawing ties to the disappointing Rabbit devices and the now defunct Humane AI pin. "But they are also not gimmicks in that ... we are now looking at AI technologies that can see, hear and speak," he added. "What this means is that the future of our primary devices will likely be liberated from the traditional touchscreens we are so familiar with on our mobile phones." It's also building on the buzzy idea of agentic AI, in which an artificial intelligence model can act on behalf of the user. Although the emerging concept has vast potential, there have already been some real-world missteps. Still, Chatterjee believes taking risks like this could prove monumental. "In the grand failures of devices like these is a whiff of what success will look like in the future -- think the Apple Newton evolving into the iPhone and iPad experience," he said. "Technologies like these are like binoculars that give you a glimpse into the future, but the present is still quite hazy."

MWC 2025: Will Newnal's Digital Clone AI OS Change Smartphones?

South Korean company Newnal has launched a revolutionary blockchain-based AI smartphone OS at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025 in Barcelona. The cutting-edge AI OS promises to build a digital clone of its users. The clone would be based on user data to create an AI avatar that appears, behaves, and responds exactly like them. Compared to other conventional AI models, such as ChatGPT or , Newnal's AI is trained solely on user data and not on public internet content. The blockchain OS gathers data from personal apps, emails, and social media to build a customized knowledge graph. This enables the AI to develop with the user, even growing older over time. A company representative emphasized that this system prioritizes privacy, allowing users to own and control their AI without relying on third-party data sources. The open-source AI can be embedded into any device, making it a versatile addition to the smartphone industry.

This little AI phone has some wild ideas

It was just a year ago that I had my first demo of the Humane AI pin -- which was also my last, as it turned out. But another AI gadget at this year's MWC is trying to take off where Humane crashed and burned, and in ways it's even weirder than the AI pin. It's a phone that captures tons of information about you, both past and present, and uses it to create your own AI avatar to act as a virtual assistant. It's part Rabbit R1, part Gemini Assistant, part science fiction. And oh yeah; there's some blockchain stuff too. I told you, it's wild. The team behind Newnal AI is based in Korea and established itself by creating a blockchain-based vaccine verification method used widely in the country. Early in my meeting with the company's founder YT Kim, he stressed one thing to me: "We never sold cryptocurrency." They're clearly aware of the bad vibes around blockchain right now. Newnal's AI phone trains an AI model on you, so it needs lots of your information. The idea is that you go around downloading your personal data history from websites like Meta and Google, and also stuff like your medical records and financial data, then feed it to Newnal's AI. Kim says the company encrypts this "personal knowledge graph" and breaks it up into pieces stored across multiple third-party cloud servers. In theory, only the owner of the data can access it. Are there massive privacy implications in all of the above? Absolutely. To its credit, Newnal has published an unusual amount of supporting documentation and technical descriptions on its website in an effort to be transparent about what it's doing. I can't verify that the company's methods are secure as it says, this is just a first look. But the rabbit hole keeps going: all of this information, plus your appearance and voice, are used to create a moving, talking version of yourself that sits in a little screen above the phone's main screen. You summon it by pressing a square button on the side of the phone, then you ask it to do things. There's all the usual stuff we're used to seeing in these demos: it can help you shop for a new pair of earrings or draft an email. Kim and his team showed me some of these demos and they all went about as expected -- and then we got to car insurance. The request was simple: help me buy a car insurance policy. I could see on screen as it appeared to comparison shop policies. At each of these steps, icons appear to indicate where the model is getting certain information. A policy was decided on, and the next request was to fill out the necessary forms to go ahead and purchase the policy. And it did; I saw it go through pages of forms on the Geico website and fill them in. Kim says that they actually bought a used car so they could go through with this demo, which is bananas. And it sure seems like it worked; I watched the model complete each step, showing its sources for the information along the way, and at the end it paid for the policy. It was one of the wildest tech demos I've ever seen, and I'm still not even sure I believe my own eyes that it worked. This is all wrapped up in a simple yet futuristic-looking little phone that Kim says was inspired by the iPhone 5S. It's a little black-and-silver rectangle with a separate upper screen where your AI sits. Newnal says it runs a "hybrid" of its own OS and Android. The versions I saw were still prototypes, but Kim says the company plans to launch the phone globally on May 1st for $375 each. It'll ship to customers two months after it goes up for pre-order. The timing might remind me of the Humane AI pin, but the whole thing gives major Rabbit R1 vibes. It's an attractive little gadget with a surprisingly low price tag that makes huge promises. We all know how that went with the R1's launch, and I'm sure the experience contributes to the skepticism I feel about what Newnal is doing. But unlike when the R1 was first unveiled, the demos I saw were convincing and the device completed all of the requests. But "Can AI fill out car insurance forms?" and "Do I feel like I can trust AI to fill out car insurance forms?" are two different questions. The same goes for "Can I train an AI model on all of my private data?" and "Should I train an AI model on all my private data?" So on and so forth. Whether or not any of it really works outside of controlled demos, and whether or not these are good ideas, I've gotta give Kim and Newnal credit for trying something bold. Elsewhere at Mobile World Congress we're putting DSLR camera lenses on phones, adding more hinges to screens that already fold, and trying to make already thin phones even thinner. Not exactly setting the world on fire. But if nothing else, Newnal is an idea -- whether it's a good one or not is something the company will have to prove outside of a conference demo. And if Rabbit and Humane have shown us anything, it's that drumming up interest at a tech conference is no substitute for shipping a product that works.