Samsung released its latest Galaxy smartphones with new artificial intelligence features as the South Korean giant seeks to win back its spot as the world's biggest smartphone seller. The S24 came out just days after industry data showed that Apple's iPhone became the world's top selling smartphone after Samsung's 12-year run as leader.
“The Galaxy S24 Series transforms our connection with the world and ignites the next decade of mobile innovation,” said TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. "Galaxy AI is built on our innovation heritage and deep understanding of how people use their phones. We're excited to see how our users around the world empower their everyday lives with Galaxy AI to open up new possibilities.”
The Galaxy S24 series will begin shipping on January 31 with the top of line Ultra starting at $1,299.
AI-Powered Mobile Device
“Artificial Intelligence will bring about great change in the mobile industry," Samsung president T.M. Roh said as he kicked off the launch event at Silicon Valley, California. Roh added that mobile devices will become the primary access points for AI, with Samsung aiming to be a leader on that path.
The premium S24 Ultra unveiled at the event was said to have the capability to translate foreign language phone calls and texts while they were taking place (Live Translate). Available in 13 languages, this function is powered by Samsung's on-device AI.
The S24 also offers an unprecedented AI-powered search function that allows users to simply circle a phrase or image they want to search. Galaxy S24 marks a milestone in the history of search as the first phone to debut intuitive, gesture-driven Circle to Search with Google, eliminating the need to juggle between apps for searches with the usual “cut and paste” process.
Messaging and car system features such as navigation were also augmented with AI to either recommend responses or do tasks, letting the driver focus on the road. AI also strengthens the phone's camera powers, with generative AI helping to fill in or remove backgrounds.
These AI features are powered both from the cloud or from the phone itself, and several use Google's Gemini foundational model. Similar AI features are widely rumored to be part of the next iPhone 16, probably to be released later this year.
First Smartphone With the Best Gemini-Powered AI Experience
"Google and Samsung have long shared deeply-held values around the importance of making technology more helpful and accessible for everyone. We're thrilled that the Galaxy S24 series is the first smartphone equipped with Gemini Pro and Imagen 2 on Vertex AI," said Janghyun Yoon, Corporate EVP and Head of Software Office of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. "After months of rigorous testing and competitive evaluation, the Google Cloud and Samsung teams worked together to deliver the best Gemini-powered AI experience on Galaxy."
Samsung is the first Google Cloud partner to deploy Gemini Pro on Vertex AI to consumers. Built from the ground up to be multimodal, Gemini can generalize and seamlessly understand, operate across, and combine different types of information including text, code, images, and video. Starting with Samsung-native applications, users can take advantage of summarization features across Notes, Voice Recorder, and Keyboard.
Galaxy S24 series users can also immediately benefit from Imagen 2, Google's most advanced text-to-image diffusion technology from Google DeepMind to date. With Imagen 2 on Vertex AI, Samsung can bring safe and intuitive photo-editing capabilities into the users' hands. These features can be found in Generative Edit in S24's Gallery application.
As part of this partnership, Samsung is also one of the first customers to test Gemini Ultra, Google's most capable and largest model for highly-complex tasks. The S24 series will also use Gemini Nano, an on-device LLM delivered as part of the Android 14 operating system, the most efficient model of Gemini for on-device tasks.
"Together with Samsung, Google Cloud sees the tremendous opportunity for generative AI to create meaningful mobile experiences that stimulate and strengthen connection and communication for millions," said Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud. "With Gemini, Samsung's developers can leverage Google Cloud's world-class infrastructure, cutting-edge performance, and flexibility to deliver safe, reliable, and engaging generative AI powered applications on Samsung smartphone devices."