293 Unbelievable Advances
“Now on to the screen,” Aron said as the screens behind him focused on the phone’s screen. Unlike the most recent iPhone, or any of the Android and Google phones on the market, the bezel around the screen was so unbelievably thin that it was practically invisible.
(Ed note: I had to look bezel up, too. In this context, it’s “a groove or flange designed to hold a beveled edge, as of a gem.” Basically, it’s the border between the screen and frame of a computer or a phone monitor.)
“The Zeus One’s screen will revolutionize the way you see the screen, thanks to our quantum dot technology. It allows for unparalleled brightness and contrast, which means you’ll get perfect visibility under any light. Unlike regular pixels, quantum dots can display any color natively, instead of as a blend of red, green, and blue. Also, thanks to our quantum dot technology, the screen resolution will be three times as detailed as the best display screen that exists, no matter the size.
“If you want to see what it looks like in reality, just look at the screens behind me. Those also incorporate our quantum dots tech, but scaled up to the size you see here.” As Aron said that, a floodlight passed across the screens behind him, but didn’t wash out the image at all.
“Now moving on to the cameras. It looks like many of you have noticed that there’s no visible lens for the front-facing camera.” A slight chuckle came from the audience. “But there’s a camera there.”
The display screens magnified the phone’s screen on them, showing a camera lens integrated into the center of the screen.
“Yes, the camera is in the middle of our screen. That was the best place for it, and it’s possible thanks again to our quantum dot technology. All quantum dots are completely transparent and clear in their resting state, which allowed us to combine the convenience of a front-facing camera with the power and resolution of a dedicated phone camera.”
A display of the camera’s specs popped up on the screens behind Aron, showing a rather impressive list of numbers. It was a fifty megapixel camera capable of 4K resolution and capturing videos up to 120 frames per second.
“Everything the camera sees while in use will be saved, allowing for seamless editing of still images and video. Even if you aren’t focusing on something in the picture, the camera definitely will be, so you’ll miss nothing! And with the GAIA OS AI assistant, editing your images and videos will be an absolute breeze. Anyone with a Zeus One will have the tools they need to make a perfect picture, all in the palms of their hands!
“I know it seems like I’m just talking nonsense and making unfulfillable promises because there’s no way anyone can rebut me on stage, so let’s test it right here and now,” Aron said as he removed the phone from his pocket. It was none other than a Zeus One.
He raised his hand and showed it to the audience as the phone booted up. The displays behind him showed the process, then switched to the audience sitting in the auditorium.
It took exactly five seconds for the phone to fully power up, and since it was the phone’s first time being powered on, Aron had to say, “Skip the introduction and consider me an experienced user.” The moment he said that, the phone showed the home screen, where it didn’t linger for long as he opened the front-facing camera without any delay at all using voice commands.
“Now screencast it to the screens behind me,” he said. The phone understood and opened the connection page, which showed the screens that he could share the live feed of the camera with. “Connect to all of them.”
With that, all three screens behind Aron showed the footage from the phone, which was crisp and clear beyond anything anyone had ever seen.
“It really is from the phone’s camera, not one of the high-quality professional cameras in the room,” he said, turning around and taking a selfie with the audience in the background and displaying it on the big screens behind him.
“Make it cool and post it on my Pangea account,” he said, and the screens behind him that were still displaying what was on his phone showed the AI assistant editing the image. With every editing pass—displayed as a line that passed from the top to the bottom of the screen, with the newly enhanced image above and the pre-enhanced photo below—the picture became clearer and more polished. After a few passes, everyone in the audience could easily pick out their individual faces in crystal-clear resolution.
The assistant then opened the Pangea app and Aron logged into it, his password displaying as a series of asterisks and the two-factor authentication blurred on the shared screens.
After successfully logging in, he input a caption and the assistant added hashtags and posted the image to his Pangea account.
The audience went silent for a few minutes as they opened their own individual Pangea accounts and found the picture Aron had just posted, then burst into raucous applause and cheers; they all knew the process of what had happened, and it was impossible to fake because they could see themselves in the picture!
“As you can see, the photo is pretty high-quality despite being taken in a dark room with a front-facing cellphone camera. And with the camera in the center of the screen, instead of at the top, you can even look yourself in the eye as you take pictures,” he said, prompting a chuckle from the influencers in the audience.
“The same level of tech is incorporated in the speakers, which use our proprietary SLAS—SpeakerLess Audio System. Instead of generating sound with a vibrating speaker, we accomplish the same result using advanced wavefront manipulation and acoustic technologies to generate sound directly in the air, essentially forming ‘sound holograms.’ That eliminates the need for speakers entirely and allows sound to be projected freely anywhere in three dimensions. And you’re currently experiencing that very technology right now,” Aron said, the sound seeming to “float” around the auditorium instead of the stage as if someone was messing with the mixer. Halfway through the introduction, everyone in the audience heard his words in English in their right ears, and their native languages in their left ear. They turned to the people next to them, and some asked if their neighbors had heard what they had, and the affirmative response caused another round of applause.
“As you’ve just personally experienced, with this technology we can create personalized sound zones in a room, where each person hears a different audio stream without the need for headphones. That’ll be particularly beneficial for shared spaces, like living rooms or vehicles, but at the moment the phone version is limited in the number of zones they can create.
“Now on to one of the most important main features of the Zeus One. The ‘ecosystem’ that’s been made possible by our Q-chip allows for instant, large data transfers between two compatible devices within 250 meters. Thanks to that, anyone using one of our new phones will be able to transfer any file from them to their friends, even if they’re a couple of football fields away. That’s also the range limit of our wireless earphones and speakers, which also use our proprietary SLAS and will be released alongside the phone as peripheral devices,” he said, then paused to wait for the resulting applause to end.
“Any device that has all these features naturally requires enough power to support them, and we’ve all seen phones running out of battery at the worst possible time. To that, I say there’s no need to worry with our Zeus One—you can use it with everything maxed out for 24 hours continuously on a full charge. For more normal usage, you can expect the battery to last anywhere from four days to a week without requiring a charge. And when you do need to charge it, our new proprietary fast charge system will take these batteries from zero to full in just under an hour and a half.
“Now for something I’m sure you all want to know: the price,” he said, then paused as the screens behind him showed the three versions of the phone he was launching. “There’s three initial versions of the Zeus One. Though they’re each different sizes, their capabilities are identical, so the size difference is only cosmetic. The starting price for the Zeus One is $999, the Zeus One Pro is $1,299, and the Zeus One EX is $1,499.”
The audience let out a collective gasp, as they had expected that the phone would be at least $2000, and that itself would be a break-even price, or even a loss. Everything that had been introduced about the phone was proprietary tech, meaning they had to absorb the full cost of research and development, plus manufacturing, instead of just licensing or buying previously existing patents.