Turing says 2018 phone will have three Snapdragon 830s, 18GB RAM, 1.2TB storage... and ALAN

Last week, Turing Robotics Industries (TRI) announced details of a new device, which it says it plans to release in 2017, featuring some truly extraordinary specs. From dual-Snapdragon 830 SoCs and 12GB of RAM, to a 'graphene supercapacitor battery', hydrogen fuelcell, and quad nano-SIM, the Turing Phone Cadenza's spec sheet reads like a fanciful wishlist with little basis in reality.

Now, TRI is promising another device with even more outlandish specs - but before we get into that, it's worth briefly reminding ourselves who TRI is, and what they've done so far.

TRI originally unveiled the Turing Phone, a crowdfunded Android handset, back in April 2015, promising delivery by the end of the year. Those who committed up to $1,300 for the device were then told it would arrive no later than the end of Q1 2016, then April, May, and June - but as Android Authority noted, backers were still waiting to receive the device in late July. It is now shipping, with such fresh specs as a Snapdragon 801 SoC (Qualcomm originally announced the 801 in February 2014), which would render the device ineligible for the latest version of Android, 7.0 Nougat anyway.

Earlier this year, TRI suddenly switched the Turing Phone from Android to Sailfish OS instead, claiming that it has "no loopholes like Android". Indeed, the Turing Phone was originally promoted as an "ultra-secure" and "unhackable" device - and yet, as ZDNet noted just a few days ago, Turing's security claims don't seem to stand up to scrutiny, and the company has offered little to substantiate them. Further, its CEO, Steve Chao, now says that he "wouldn't brand Turing Phone as a 'secure' phone... it's more a fashion phone."

It was Chao who announced details of the Turing Phone Cadenza last week, and given the company's history, you'd be forgiven for being a little skeptical about its promises to deliver a device with such incredible specs any time soon.

And if you raised an eyebrow at that device, just check out the specs for the handset after that one - the Turing Monolith Chaconne:

6.4-inch display with 4K (3840x2160px)
Triple (!) Qualcomm Snapdragon 830 SoCs
18GB RAM (3 x 6GB LPDDR4X)
1.2TB of storage (3 x 256GB onboard + 2 x 256GB microSD)
60MP "quad rear camera" with "Triplet Lens / T1.2" and "iMAX 6K"
20MP "dual front camera"
WiGig support
"Advanced AI Voice-Authenticated Power On/Off"
3600mAh Graphene Supercapacitor Battery + 1600mAh Li-Ion + Hydrogen Fuelcell (!!)
Graphene Oxide composite bodywork with Liquid Metal 2.0 Structural Frame, Lightweight Metal Outer Frame, High Temperature Alloy Components
Quad Nano-SIM support
Augmented Reality: Parallel Tracking & Mapping API

Like the Turing Phone Cadenza, TRI says that the Monolith Chaconne will run on 'Swordfish OS' - a spin-off of Sailfish OS - with deep learning artificial intelligence capabilities:

Running Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM)

Differential Privacy

The announcement also includes a cryptic reference to something called "A.L.A.N.", which is "to be revealed next" - and which, frankly, sounds suspiciously like some sort of acronym for a digital assistant with 'artificial learning' capabilities.

In this latest announcement, again sent out as an email newsletter, Chao began with an intro "inspired by" Steve Jobs' Here's To The Crazy Ones Apple commercial voiceover - the email avoids quoting it too closely, presumably in an effort to avoid falling foul of Apple's legal department.

Chao also offered some detail on the technical aspects of its new phones, saying that its multiple CPUs will be interconnected wirelessly:

TRI plans on connecting multiple CPUs via WiGig by implementing an ad-hoc driver to the 60GHz channel via on-board USB3.0. This complicated computing process stores a transient matrix in SSD of CPU(1), then it recomputes and shares the transient matrix with the other SSD of CPU(2) simultaneously. This results in the CPUs sharing their computing power in parallel. Such proprietary technology enables TRI to achieve never-seen-before computing power on a mobile device.

Turing says that it will build its new devices in "a manufacturing facility right where Nokia and Microsoft used to produce their mobile phone prototypes".

The Turing Monolith Chaconne shown here is due to arrive - with all of the specs listed above - in 2018.