The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s AI features feel like an afterthought

With out AI, there wouldn’t be a lot to say about Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Extremely.

Whereas it’s a really good Android cellphone general, it’s not vastly totally different from final 12 months’s Galaxy S23 Ultra. I might level to the brand new titanium body, the flat show that feels a bit roomier than the previous Extremely’s curved glass, or the requisite annual upticks in show brightness and processing energy. Nonetheless the general impression isn’t so totally different from the S23 Extremely.

The true novelty with the S24 Extremely comes through on the software program facet, the place Samsung has slathered on a variety of generative AI options that allow you to can summarize net pages, rewrite textual content messages, repair up your handwriting, and translate cellphone calls in actual time. It has a number of AI digital camera tips as effectively, together with the flexibility to reposition objects in photographs and add clean slo-mo to present movies.

However whereas the AI trickery makes for a extra fascinating cellphone, it doesn’t make for a considerably higher one. Studying to make use of Samsung’s AI options requires some new habits, and lots of of them simply aren’t helpful sufficient to justify the additional effort. Proper now the boring smartphone efficiency nonetheless issues greater than the novel AI stuff.

Caught with the defaults

The most important drawback with Samsung’s new AI options is that they’re tied to Samsung apps that I’d relatively not use.

Net web page summaries, for example, solely work with Samsung’s inventory net browser, which doesn’t sync my historical past with different gadgets and stored nagging me to make use of its Samsung Cross password supervisor (regardless of having set Bitwarden as my system-level password supervisor). The summaries themselves have been additionally overly transient, with no room for follow-up queries, and I quickly determined they weren’t well worth the trade-offs.

I had an analogous expertise with Samsung’s Chat Help function, which may rewrite textual content messages through a button on Samsung’s built-in keyboard. Its potential to intelligently insert emoji appeared particularly promising, however I ended up retreating again to Google’s Gboard keyboard after too many run-ins with Samsung’s decidedly unintelligent gesture typing recognition.

And whereas Samsung’s Notes app has some neat AI options—together with a solution to auto-format typed notes with headings and bullet factors—I’d a lot relatively use Obsidian for note-taking. I’ve but to get within the behavior of utilizing Samsung Notes as a place to begin, and need the Galaxy S24 Extremely might simply format the content material of any chosen textual content as a substitute.

Photograph modifying tips

On the photograph entrance, Samsung’s generative AI modifying options have extra apparent upsides, however a few of them are tucked out of sight and others are hit-or-miss with their outcomes.

Having the ability to take away undesirable objects from photographs is a superb function—and in contrast to with Google’s Magic Eraser, it doesn’t require a Google One subscription—however you may get some bizarre outcomes if the circumstances aren’t good. I attempted to take away the waiter from a restaurant photograph with my youngsters and their grandparents, for example, and Samsung changed him with a lamp that didn’t exist in actuality. I attempted eradicating a number of folks within the bleachers behind my son at a flag soccer sport, and what was left appeared vaguely skeletal.

Repositioning folks in an present photograph can be laborious to make work in apply, neat because it sounds in principle. I’ve but to discover a photograph the place I actually needed to make use of it, and the edited impact can look apparent if the cropping across the topic isn’t excellent.

The photograph options that the majority impressed me have been Samsung’s shadow and reflection elimination, however they have been additionally the toughest to search out: To make use of them, you should swipe up on an present photograph, the faucet the display screen to see your choices.

That leaves only one photograph trick that I discovered to be unequivocally nice: With On the spot Slo Mo, Samsung makes use of AI body era to decelerate present movies with out making them choppier. Not solely does it work as marketed, however I discovered it simply through a pop-up tip that seems whenever you’re modifying a video for the primary time. (You can even shortly preview the gradual movement impact through a protracted press.)

A famous absence

Since I’m utilizing the Galaxy S24 Extremely specifically, I’m additionally bummed that Samsung didn’t construct the audio recording app of my desires—if solely as a result of it got here so near doing so.

Very like the Recorder app on Pixel telephones, Samsung’s Voice Recorder can generate a transcript (and, optionally, a abstract) utilizing AI, letting you faucet on the phrases to listen to what was being stated on the time. It really works effectively sufficient, however I’d pay good cash for Android app that mixed audio recording and transcripts with handwriting, so I can take notes whereas recording interviews. Samsung’s precise Notes app doesn’t supply that functionality.

This speaks to my broader ambivalence with Samsung’s AI options: They only really feel bolted on in ways in which may very well be simply as simply achieved with third-party software program. If Samsung sees generative AI as greater than only a parlor trick, it ought to discover deeper methods to combine the know-how.

As an alternative of a summarize function in Samsung’s browser, for example, how a few common summarize shortcut that applies to any doc? How about making AI rewrites work with any textual content discipline, no matter which keyboard you’re utilizing? How about utilizing AI to automate actions on apps and web sites, as we’ve seen from Rabbit?

After all, such issues might additionally simply get in the way in which, and one purpose I like Samsung telephones now could be that they’ve gotten better at leaving you alone. Samsung may additionally ultimately charge for AI features, and so they’re not even value shopping for the cellphone for at this level, not to mention paying further for them. Having the ability to ignore the AI options totally—or simply neglect them, as I typically have—isn’t such a nasty factor, particularly when the remainder of the cellphone is sweet sufficient.