Reading about it, I see some characteristics: no screen, possibly something you can carry in your pocket, possibly has ai-driven awareness of its environment.
OpenAI wants to get into the hardware business, so they came up with something. Is it going to be something people actually want? I am skeptical, but as a consumer it's cool that so companies are trying out various new devices even if most of them are no good.
given the vagueness of the available information, i'm guessing they haven't actually defined its capabilities yet.
They can accept that building a smartphone is doomed to fail, and they want to build some hardware, so they're experimenting with all the "not a smartphone" form factors they can think of to see what sticks.
I think it is going to be a set-top device that casts to the TV with built in sensors and a camera to enable you to FaceTime with your AI assistant/friend.
A device trying to duplicate a part of smartphone/smartwatch functionality is doomed to fail, as those can easily just be an app on said devices.
So the computation part is likely out of the question. Input/output remains, and there is really not much you can innovate here.
Smartglasses? EarPod clones?