Galaxy AI is coming to even fewer Samsung phones than we thought

With the Samsung Galaxy S24 series unveiling last week, Artificial Intelligence has somehow become an even bigger talking point in smartphones. Samsung even went to the extent of calling them “AI phones” instead of smartphones. Some of the new features in the Galaxy AI suite are genuinely cool, and the Korean giant was quick to confirm that the feature set will eventually be made available to older devices as well. However, it turns out that the final list of eligible devices will be much smaller than we thought, and has some notable omissions as well.

At its Unpacked 2024 event earlier this month, Samsung announced the Galaxy S24 trio of smartphones. A significant chunk of the keynote presentation was spent talking about the new smart software features, which will be called Galaxy AI going forward. They include Circle to Search, Live Translate, Note Assist, Photo Assist and more. And with the phones promising seven years of software updates, we expect the list to grow in the future.

At the launch, it was also confirmed that select older devices will receive Galaxy AI functionality via software updates, such as the S23 series, S23 FE, Z Flip 5, Z Fold 5 and the Tab S9 — sometime in the first half of this year. Turns out, this was an exhaustive list and the S22 series will not get any of the Galaxy AI goodness. In a conversation with TechRadar, Samsung’s Head of Customer Experience, Patrick Chomet, revealed that none of the devices launched in 2022 will make the cut, stating that they wanted to “secure the quality and the performance of what we deploy. Then we will learn how people use (these features) and tune the performance.”

This might come as a blow, as the Samsung Galaxy S22 is not even two years old at this point and uses the same Exynos 2200 chipset as the S23 FE. The spokesperson did use phrases like “for now” while justifying this decision, but we wouldn’t hold our breaths over it. For the eligible models, we expect the One UI 6.1 update to bring Galaxy AI capabilities.

It also needs to be noted that the Samsung Galaxy S24’s AI features are free only until the end of 2025, post which they will require a subscription of sorts. The specifics such as pricing have not been shared yet, but third-party features like Google’s Circle to Search could remain free for longer. Google is doing something similar with the Pixel 8 series though, with the headlining Magic Editor feature, among others, requiring a Google One subscription.

Related

Samsung Galaxy S24’s AI features are only free until the end of 2025

Samsung has not revealed the pricing after that

Perhaps this is an early look at how smartphone companies want to create additional revenue streams in the future, by locking certain features and capabilities behind a paywall. While Samsung and Google are early to jump on the bandwagon, others such as OnePlus are taking a slightly different approach with their flagships.