The front lines of the battle for smartphone do­minance ov­er the coming years have gro­wn clearer after Chinese tec­hnology firm Huawei presented an AI-powered phone designed to go head-to-head with Samsung and Apple.

Features needed to prop­el a device into the top end are growing increasingly co­mplex and expensive to develop, meaning only the co­mpanies with the deepest expertise and pockets can hope to compete.

On the outside, the diffe­rences between phones from the world’s 3 biggest smartphone firms are small: th­ey boast a screen stretching fr­om edge to edge, dual came­r­as for high-quality photos and big batteries. Under the hood, the investments Sams­ung, Apple and Huawei ha­ve made into technology at the heart of devices is what th­­ey hope will set them apart.

Both US giant Apple and Chinese firm Huawei have bet on artificial intelligence capabilities designed to take some of the load off users’ shoulders, showcasing them in their phones’ cameras at glossy launch events.

Announcing its iPhone X last month, Apple showed off un­locking the device by rec­o­gnising owner’s face. Hua­w­ei on Monday demonstrated its newest smartph­o­ne Mate 10 recognising wh­en it was pointed at a plate of fo­od, a vase of flowers or a fa­m­ily pet and adjusting its ca­mera settings automatically.

Systems like these are based on so-called “machine learning” — meaning that rather than a human programmer working out from scratch how to recognise a face, for example, a piece of software teaches itself to identify patterns by sifting through mountains of data.

Huawei said it had trai­ned its camera on 100 milli­on photos to  achieve its spe­edy image recognition, and also showcased the Mate 10’s power for language translation or housekeeping tasks like organising files.

Both Apple and Huawei have built specialist machine lear­n­ing capabiliti­es into the pro­c­essors that power their ph­ones, which could give third-party app developers all over the world the chance to thi­nk up new uses for the technique. “AI is no longer a virtual concept but something that intertwines with our da­i­ly life,” said Huawei consu­m­­er devices chief Richard Yu. The latest round of the smartphone wars also showcases just how huge is the investments needed to compete for a podium position.

“Alongside Samsung and Apple, Huawei’s growing te­c­hnology capabilities threaten to place market leadership beyond the financial resources” of smaller firms, said Ian Fogg, mobile and telecoms industry expert at research firm IHS Markit.

In 2016, the Chinese gr­oup reported $11.6 billion of spending on research, with its massive telecoms infrastructure business helping fuel its drive for handset dominance.

South Korea’s Sa­m­sung Electronics reported spending $13.1 billion, while Apple forked out just over $10 billion. But ho­wever much cash firms fling at flashy features, in the end their success will rest on the devices’ reception by the general public — and the armies of programmers writing the apps that will run on the phones.

  “Huawei’s challenge is how to maximise the use of its AI chip given it does not develop or control the smartphone operating system its devices use, Android, unlike Apple,” Fogg said.

Apple tightly controls its whole devices, from hardwa­re through the operating system to third-party apps, me­a­ning developers know exactly what they can expect when programming for the iPhone.

Google’s Android system is more open, but the operating system is used on thousands of phone models from different manufacturers, all with widely varying specifications. Android app makers may fear it is not worth their time to write specialist AI-enabled software for Hua­wei's device alone, missing out on hundreds of millions of other potential customers in the Android universe.

Huawei is aware of the risk, Yu said. Seeking to ward off the danger, the Shenzhen-based firm has made its phone compatible with AI toolkits from Facebook and Google, making it easier for programmers to tap into its processor’s special powers. “Apple, their system is th­eir system. It’s always been like that. We’re trying to do an open eco-system,” Yu said.