App-Free AI Phones Are Coming: Deepu John Says 'Industry Is Heading In That Direction'

Qualcomm announced the launch of its latest chipsets in India -- Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 and Snapdragon 4 Gen 5 -- during an event in New Delhi. Both chipsets are designed to power mid-range smartphones. On the sidelines of the event, Timesnownews.com spoke to Deepu John, Senior Director of Product Management at Qualcomm, about the future of smartphones and mobile processors.Speaking about the growing conversation around app-free smartphones and agentic AI, John said the industry is already moving in that direction, even though the ecosystem is still evolving. "Clearly, the industry is heading in that direction. All the technology pieces are not fully put together yet but the building blocks are already there,” he told Times Now Tech.According to John, many

of these AI-driven experiences can already run on Qualcomm-powered premium smartphones. However, the overall experience depends heavily on the balance between on-device AI processing and cloud or network-based computing.

"We definitely believe the future is moving toward agentic AI driving much more of our daily lives because it creates a very natural user experience. Qualcomm is preparing for that future," he added.While generative AI has already entered smartphones, John believes the next phase -- agentic AI -- will depend less on raw hardware power and more on how smartphone brands design the user experience."A lot of it actually depends on the handset OEMs and phone manufacturers. From our side, we already have many of the core technology building blocks in place," he said.John explained that smartphone makers now need to decide how users will interact with AI systems, how interfaces will evolve and how AI models will be integrated into daily smartphone usage."The key challenge now is defining the user experience," he said.According to the senior Qualcomm executive, infrastructure needed for agentic AI already exists."We have 5G, strong connectivity, Wi-Fi, and future-ready technologies like 6G coming up. We also have hybrid AI capabilities where some processing happens on the device and some happens on the network."India Could Become A Major Market For Agentic AIWhen asked whether agentic AI would see mass adoption across India’s Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 cities, John said the technology would eventually gain wide acceptance as AI experiences become more natural and useful for consumers."India is especially interesting because of its diversity of languages. Voice interaction is the most natural way for users to communicate with devices and localisation will play a huge role here. This trend will apply globally, but India’s localisation needs make it even more exciting," he added.Replying to a question on whether agentic AI would remain limited to premium smartphones, John said agentic AI features will not remain limited to flagship smartphones forever."Over time, the required performance for these AI experiences will become more accessible across lower price segments. It will also depend on the balance between on-device processing and cloud/network-based processing," he explained.