Samsung’s One UI 6.1 launches for mid-range phones, but skips the AI

Ben Schoon | May 14 2024 - 7:41 am PT

After bringing it to the past few years worth of flagship devices, Samsung is rolling out One UI 6.1 to its mid-range Galaxy A series devices, but without the AI features everything else got.

Over the past day or two, Samsung has started rolling out One UI 6.1 to the Galaxy A34 and Galaxy A54 in select regions, including the US for the latter device. This follows Samsung bringing the same update to Galaxy S22, S21, Fold 4, Flip 4, and more devices earlier this month.

However, unlike those releases, Samsung isn’t bringing any of its AI features to its Galaxy A series smartphones.

SamMobile reports that the One UI 6.1 update for these devices brings with it better image editing in the Gallery app, a depth-of-field effect for your wallpaper, new lock screen widgets, additional customization options, more battery protection features, and a lot of other tweaks and changes throughout.

But there’s no AI.

Samsung seemingly won’t be bringing any of its on-device or cloud-powered AI features to these devices, even including Google’s Circle to Search. It’s not a huge surprise, as Samsung never mentioned AI would be coming to these devices, but it’s a little bit of a shame nonetheless.

Notably too, the Galaxy S21 FE also did not get Circle to Search, as pointed out by Tech Issues Today, in its update which started rolling out earlier this week.