Samsung's Galaxy S24 family is here and the big selling point has been the addition of Galaxy AI. Not only will the feature be on the new phones but Samsung has confirmed Galaxy AI support for older handsets, including the Galaxy S23 series and both the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5. However, it appears that's where the support ends — at least for the time being.
In a recent exclusive with Tech Radar, Samsung’s Head of Customer Experience Patrick Chomet discussed why the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22 Plus and S22 Ultra will not see any of the Galaxy AI features despite only being a couple of years old.
Chomet told Tech Radar following Galaxy Unpacked: “First of all, to get [these features] on the Galaxy S24 series was so much work. I’m exhausted. And actually, TM Roh [President of Samsung’s mobile division] wanted to announce [at Unpacked] that we can support Galaxy S23 devices with Galaxy AI, which we will [now be doing] within the first half of the year.”
“We want to ensure that, over time, our AI experiences can be supported by [mobile] performance, which leads to CPU and GPU capability,” Chomet continued. “So for now, we are learning; we are going step-by-step. We know that Galaxy AI works well on the Galaxy S24 series and we know it will work well on [the Galaxy S23 series]. But we don’t know what the intensity of AI usage will be for the average customer, and [therefore how that] intensity will impact on-device resources and cloud resources.”
“Number one, we want to secure the quality and the performance of what we deploy. Then we will learn how people use [these features] and tune the performance. Number two, we will deploy [Galaxy AI] on a second set of devices – specifically, the S23, S23 FE, Z Fold 5, Z Flip 5 and Tab S9 – to see how it works.”
It appears, that Samsung will likely release the Galaxy AI features to the Galaxy S23 with the One UI 6.1 update, and they will use this to measure the strain on the hardware and software as well as how customers use the service. This data will likely influence if Samsung considers releasing Galaxy AI to any older model.
It should be noted that the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE uses the same Exynos 2200 chipset but when pressed on this Chomet stated, “For now, we’re limiting Galaxy AI to last-gen devices.” This indicates that, at least for now, S22 users will not have a chance to make use of Galaxy AI.
It's not all that surprising that Samsung does not want to push out the Galaxy AI software too fast, especially for older models. However, one could make the case that the reason for this also has to do with the relative lack of difference between the last few Galaxy series. It could simply be that Samsung wants to limit the features to separate the phones and push sales. For now, all we can do is wait and see what Samsung does with Galaxy AI.
