Samsung’s new Galaxy S24 Series puts a lot of focus on the “Galaxy AI” suite, beefing up the phone’s AI capabilities. While these features do make the user experience better and offer some assistance, the catch is that they’re only available on the latest flagship. This might be a bit of a bummer for folks who didn’t feel the need to splurge on new hardware this time.
As mentioned before, a bunch of Galaxy AI features will eventually roll out to older Galaxy devices. Initially, the roster of devices set to receive these cool features was a bit short and included newer ones like the Galaxy S23 series, Galaxy S23 FE, Galaxy Z Fold 5, Galaxy Z Flip 5, and Galaxy Tab S9. Samsung has now confirmed that these updates will hit these devices by the end of June 2024.
Samsung Electronics’ President of mobile business, T.M. Roh, just dropped a bombshell. The company is officially spilling the beans that Galaxy AI is heading to around 100 million Galaxy mobile devices globally this year. Roh also mentioned that despite the costs involved in developing Galaxy AI, the features will be up for grabs for free until 2025. What happens after that? Well, the brand is still figuring out its next move.
According to our analysis, there are various needs for mobile AI. So, there will be consumers who will be satisfied with using the AI capabilities for free. Then there could also be customers who wish for even more powerful AI capabilities, and even pay for them. So, in the future decision making, we will take all these factors into consideration. – T.M. Roh (via ET Telecom)
Samsung’s vague stance on whether they’ll keep the features free for current Galaxy AI users has stirred up some heated discussions in the tech community. It’s worth noting that Galaxy AI isn’t a solo venture; Samsung teamed up with Google to develop it, and a bunch of its features run on Google’s Gemini models. This hints at a substantial financial commitment from Samsung to bring these cutting-edge capabilities to their latest devices.
Yet, a bunch of folks argue that the $100 bump in the Ultra model’s price should cover the software development expenses, and flipping the script on consumers next year would be a bit shady. That might be why Samsung is playing it coy on their plans, kind of feeling out how users react. We’ve got some time before this becomes a real concern, so for now, let’s just savor the free ride with Galaxy AI.