Turing Robotics Announces Another Phone That Will Never Ship

A few years ago, it looked like the bizarre but imaginative Turing Phone was just feasible enough to become a reality. Then, Turing Robotic Industries (TRI) started saying and doing some incredibly strange things. The company filed for bankruptcy without shipping any phones, but it’s not gone. No, TRI has returned with a phone concept so improbable that it’s actually funny. Meet the HubblePhone.

It’s hard at first to even tell this thing is supposed to be a phone — it looks like a compact camcorder from a couple of years ago. It’s a clamshell device with a rotating hinge, and each “deck” has its own software, processor, and storage. The entire surface appears to be composed of screens. TRI claims it will have “Hybrid-Glass-PMMA Over AMOLEDs” that you can use to display content.

The HubblePhone will have not one, not two, but three operating systems. There’s a custom OS called Keplerian OS (based on FreeBSD) on both decks. Android 9.0 is also on both. The main deck also has Sailfish 3 for “console mode.” Yeah, that seems reasonable.

TRI makes a lot of claims, though, and almost none of them are believable. This device will allegedly have an “emotional machine-intelligence chip,” whatever that means. It also appears to have around six cameras (the actual count seems inconsistent), and one of them is 60MP with 15x optical zoom. Several of those cameras are packed into at least two notches. Again, it’s kind of hard to tell.

Even the basic elements of this phone seem made up. The spec table claims this phone will run a Snapdragon 855 in each of the phone’s two sections. That chip hasn’t been announced and will probably never exist. The Turing Phone Cadenza was supposed to have a Snapdragon 830, which is a model number Qualcomm never used. Not enough? The HubblePhone will be 5G with support for every band imaginable, ignoring the lack of any 5G radios that could do that.

TRI says the HubblePhone will launch in the first quarter of 2020. Don’t let the long development time fool you — this phone will never exist. Its only value is in the amusement you’ll get from looking at the unrealistic renders and specs. TRI plans to “sell” the phone for $2,749, but it could price the phone at a million dollars and it wouldn’t matter.

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