Feb 19, 2026
3 min read
Big tech companies are now competing not just to sell the next phone... but to bury the smartphone as it is known today.
For more than 15 years, smartphones have been the center of digital life: banks, cameras, maps, chats, calendars, and mobile consoles in the same shiny rectangle.But something is changing.
Tech giants are already openly talking about "after the phone" and testing a variety of devices: artificial intelligence pencils, augmented reality glasses, talking wearables, and gadgets that promise to accompany people without taking their phones out of their pockets...or even needing to own them.
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The question is no longer whether there will be a “post-smartphone,” but what form it will take and who can implement it.
A club of people who want to kill smartphones
In a scene captured by The Economist, the whole movement became clear: Lauren Powell Jobs asked Sam Altman and Joni Ive what they were working on with AI.The two pondered the question for a moment, but Altman dropped a key clue: the device they were working on was "no different than an iPhone."
To describe the current phone, Altman likens it to walking through Times Square: the noise, the lights, the constant distractions.The new idea goes in the opposite direction: something quieter, more relevant to the context, and less distracting than the screen that demands attention during the day.
OpenAI has already announced that it is "on track" to launch its tool in the second half of the year.Just two days later, Apple announced that it is working on its own AI wearable pin, a type of smart pin that will try to advance the game.
Meanwhile, Meta has been betting on smart glasses for some time and will be redirecting resources from its virtual reality headsets to accelerate the development of "all-day" augmented reality glasses.The bet is clear: if the next big device lands on your face, it better have your logo on it.
Amazon also does not want to be left out: with Alexa +, its new version of the assistant, it plans to extend the voice of artificial intelligence to speakers, glasses and headphones.The idea is that one can communicate with the assistant without the screen or anywhere.
Why is the phone so expensive?
There is no small context behind all these innovations: the mobile phone market is cooling.According to data cited by The Economist and consulting firm Counterpoint Research, global mobile phone shipments could fall by around 6% this year, worse than previously expected.
Add to this two powerful punches:
On the one hand, the price of memory has risen as AI data centers take over a large share of production.
In the last 15 months, the price of 12GB of DRAM, which is typical of high-end devices, has risen by about $ 70, putting pressure on both low-end brands and giants like Apple.
On the other hand, the so-called "foundry war": for years, smartphone manufacturers have been the main customers of companies like TSMC.
Now AI is in charge.Chips for Nvidia and other production model designers make more room, so phones start to lose priority in the queue.
In this environment, it's not uncommon for large tech companies to want to migrate users to new tools that are more relevant to their business.
Every company that pushes the future is best suited to it
"Post-smartphone" is not a magical device;rather, each giant is a slate that tries to push its own vision:
- Meta dreams of increasing reach and ad revenue across networks with a seamless, shareable experience every time.
- Amazon wants more speakers, headphones and wearables with Alexa to collect more data and make shopping in the market easy as it says.
- OpenAI will gain a lot if people adopt conversational assistants that act as an intermediate layer between them and the digital world, reducing their dependence on traditional screens.
- Apple tries to stay at the center of the main ecosystem, whether with iPhone, AI pin or glasses that integrate seamlessly with the rest of its products.
Behind the rhetoric of "more natural experiences" lies something very specific: whoever controls the core device controls the relationship with the user and billing.
Problem: The successor is not ready yet
On paper, it all seems almost science fiction.In practice, the reality is much less beautiful.
Smart glasses only have around 15 million users worldwide, which is ridiculous compared to the hundreds of millions of iPhones and other smartphones sold each year.
The alternatives have serious problems: short battery life, overheating, privacy concerns, unsightly appearance, and in some cases sonic duds like Humane's AI Pins.
Even their manufacturers admit that many of these devices currently rely on the phone to do much of the heavy lifting: processing, connectivity, account management, payments, and more.
Will they retire the smartphone or will it become their assistant?
For now, the threat of Apple and Google's dominance is more legal than real.The smartphone continues to be the center of digital life and, in many cases, the brain integrates these new applications with AI.
What's interesting is not how the phone suddenly "dies" but how it can stand out.
It is possible that the future will not be a direct replacement, but rather a combination of devices where the user interacts more with voice, gestures and glasses and less with a standard rectangular screen.
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Plans to stop the smartphone already.It remains to be seen if they succeed more than adding features to the bag... or if the square that changes everything in time ends up being part of the ever-growing ecosystem of artificial intelligence.
