The next smartphone battleground is AI

Smartphone manufacturers have entered the AI race, with a competition to integrate the technology into their devices in the upcoming battle of 2024.

Samsung has waged a new war in the fiercely competitive smartphone battleground, going all in AI on the newest edition of its premium device range, the Galaxy S series.

That’s the view of Eric Chou, Samsung’s Australian head of mobile experience, who believes the company’s Galaxy S series released Thursday is about to set that challenge.

“I think with the Galaxy S, as it’s always released at the beginning of the year, it sort of sets the standard for what a phone or a premium phone should be. And definitely for us, this is a new era of what a new smartphone should be,” he said.

The new device line-up uses both on-device and cloud-based AI to perform tasks from photo editing to live translation, transcription and summarising context. It’s but another addition of what appears to be a broader AI strategy, adding partial or full access to Samsung’s language model to its entire consumer product range.

“The on-device AI uses the Samsung language model and that helps with things like live translation. The reason why we use Samsung’s own language is that one, we want it to be absolutely secure, and two, we want to reduce the latency of having any of that translation having to go to the cloud and back,” Mr Chou said.

Cloud-based AI was being used for applications including photo editing, providing instant edits including brightening and sharpening and images, as well filling gaps left when unwanted items are removed.

The new Galaxy S24 range with the Ultra, the S24+ and S24.

The world’s top smartphone manufacturers have long competed on camera development, however the ability for AI to change the way photos are taken and processed appears to have changed that race.

“Cameras have sort of been the battleground for the last couple of years in terms of superiority,” Mr Chou said.

“This time around, and sort of building on the strength of our hardware and camera, it’s really about looking at how we leverage AI and marry that with the hardware to give Australian consumers, not only a more personal experience, but also one that is more empowering in the way that they’re able to utilise their devices.”

AI was the overarching theme at CES in Las Vegas last week, for both Samsung and just about every other consumer electronics company.

While some swear the technology can be used without additional knowledge, others including Samsung admitted consumers can only be prompted so far and some learning is required to fully utilise its benefits.

“Now is just the right time to ensure that the features that we’re actually building into Galaxy AI are truly enhancing the way that people use their device, as opposed to just being another AI feature for the sake of being an AI feature,” Mr Chou said.

The view that AI would change the world arrived several years ago for Samsung, which established its own AI research centres in 2017 to understand what is “potentially the next industrial revolution”, Mr Chou said.

“Samsung has been looking at this for a while not just in terms of maturing our language model but more importantly looking at enablers, specifically around 5G,” he said.

While the AI applications on its new mobile range fall under the banner of Galaxy AI, the company was using the technology across its whole appliance range, which includes TVs, fridges and washing machines.

At CES, the brand had set up dozens of demonstrations of tasks that were ultimately performed by the machine but chosen or prompted by AI, which had been integrated into its SmartThings app – the Samsung equivalent of Google’s or Apple’s home apps.

The company’s focus is now on broadening what its SmartThings home application can connect to, extending partnerships with more appliance and device manufacturers. Overseeing some of that drive is Jeremy Senior, Samsung’s Australian vice president of consumer devices.

Attendees enter the Samsung booth as a digital message ‘AI for All’ during CES 2024 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Picture: Ethan Miller/AFP

“Fundamentally, AI is a technology solution to a complex set of tasks. At its simplest point, it’s about giving consumers a benefit through machines doing complex calculations of tasks,” he said.

“And the reason why Samsung’s breadth of ecosystem is so important is because when more products can talk to more products, they deliver more beneficial outcomes.”

Samsung didn’t want its devices to perform single one-off tasks, rather it wanted to provide connectivity wherever a consumer went, Mr Senior said, adding that the smart home concept extends far beyond a person’s home.

“It’s about how you can take AI and SmartThings and connectivity out of the home as well, so that as you’re approaching your home, your car can turn the air conditioning on, and it can open the garage door utilising a connected model,” he said.

Australians were already gung-ho on this type of technology, Mr Senior said, adding that Samsung research showed that 50 per cent of people were interested in purchasing connected devices and most had up to 10 connectable devices already in their home.

While AI applications are some of the key features of the new phone range, Mr Chou said that Samsung doesn’t want consumers to associate the new phones only with those features.

“What we ideally like to think is that Galaxy AI isn’t necessarily the reason people will use this phone, what we ideally want to ensure is that people are just getting more out of their devices,” he said.

Joseph Lam was a guest of Samsung in San Jose.