As predictable as yesterday’s Galaxy Unpacked might have felt, there’s still plenty to dig through now that Samsung’s latest smartphone lineup is official. Sure, you probably know what to expect from the hardware — and if you don’t, we have a pair of excellent hands-ons for the Galaxy S24 and S24+ and the Galaxy S24 Ultra you should check out — but what about all of those AI features coming to this trio? As I’m kicking off my review period with Samsung’s latest phablet, I’m digging deep into everything that makes these phones exciting, and that includes Voice Recorder.
In previous smartphones, Samsung’s Voice Recorder app has been a pretty basic recording service, capable of capturing memos or quick interviews but not much else. But with the company’s new focus on AI-powered tricks, it’s coming for Google’s lauded Recorder app on Pixels. Not only is Samsung entering the transcription-based race, but the company is also jumping straight into AI-generated summaries of your recordings. If you’re looking for something to rival the Pixel 8 Pro, there’s good news and bad news here.
Let’s start with the good news. I think most Pixel users were surprised to learn just how restricted the Pixel’s AI summaries were when it first rolled out last month. While it’s impressive to see Google relying entirely on its on-device Gemini Nano LLM to churn out summaries, the combination of strict time limits up to just fifteen minutes of recording and the lackluster bullet points made for a pretty disappointing first impression. Not so with Samsung’s Voice Recorder.
I recorded 20 minutes of a very long Pokemon-related video that fell into my suggestions, and despite being five minutes longer than what Google can utilize, it managed to divide sections of the recording into… well, frankly, too many sections. Samsung has actually gone a little overboard in summarizing speech; although I like the subheads, it’s a little overwhelming. But it’s more than three basic bullet points generated from less than 15 minutes of recordings, and that alone makes it the winner.
Now, this is probably because Samsung is using cloud-based AI to analyze these conversations, something a little less impressive than what you’ll find on Pixel. But even if these summaries aren’t perfect, they’re way more useful than what Google’s Recorder app is capable of generating. If Samsung can continue to evolve its model, I could see this becoming essential for any Galaxy-toting college student in lectures.
Okay, now the bad news. Samsung’s transcripts have to be generated after you’ve recorded, which makes the process much slower than Google’s method. Even worse, though, is the amount of time it took to get through 20 minutes of speech. The Galaxy S24 Ultra took nearly two full minutes to parse the full recording, and once it was finished, I was left with something that was, unfortunately, filled with a lot of gibberish — certainly more than I’m used to from my Pixel 8 Pro.
Granted, giving the recording a topic like Pokemon — filled with made up towns and fictional creatures — is a little mean, especially when you add in a fairly thick accent from this content creator. But for every sentence where the transcription is correct, there’s another one that is completely unreadable unless you listen back to your recording in the background. Google, in my experience, is much better at handling this sort of thing.
Still, the Galaxy S24 impressed me enough with its summaries to keep me hopeful for the future of this feature. I’m not sure it’s worth paying for, necessarily, but considering the Galaxy S24 Ultra is likely to remain my daily driver when I arrive at MWC next month, it’s good to know I might not need to carry my Pixel 8 Pro in my other pocket after all.
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