Samsung Galaxy AI won’t be coming to devices released before 2023, and hardware isn’t the reason

Ben Schoon | Jan 25 2024 - 7:03 am PT

The new Galaxy S24 series ushers in a collection of AI features in Samsung’s One UI Android skin, and those features will be coming to some older devices. However, in a new interview, Samsung has confirmed that Galaxy AI won’t be coming to anything released before 2023, and the reason has nothing to do with hardware.

The new “Galaxy AI” suite on Samsung Galaxy S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra contains a variety of different AI-powered features. These include using generative AI to make advanced edits to photos, transcribing and translating voice recordings, generating a summary from notes, and translating or generating new versions of your chat conversations. One of the features can even translate a phone call in real-time, completely on-device.

During its launch event, Samsung directly confirmed that Galaxy AI will be coming to some older devices. These include:

Galaxy S23
Galaxy S23+
Galaxy S23 Ultra
Galaxy S23 FE
Galaxy Tab S9
Galaxy Tab S9+
Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra
Galaxy Z Fold 5
Galaxy Z Flip 5

What’s missing from that list, though, is anything that was released before 2023. The Galaxy S22 series, Fold 4 and Flip 4, and many others are missing. And, speaking to TechRadar, Samsung has confirmed that won’t be changing anytime soon.

In a statement, Samsung’s Head of Customer Experience, Patrick Chomet, explains that Galaxy AI won’t be coming to any devices prior to the Galaxy S23, at least for now. He explains:

We want to ensure that, over time, our AI experiences can be supported by [mobile] performance, which leads to CPU and GPU capability. 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’s a pretty reasonable explanation, except for one key point. When it’s mentioned that one reason is whether or not the device’s performance can handle the AI features, Samsung is talking about a large variety of different devices. The Galaxy S23 FE in particular is an odd case, as the device is powered by the Exynos 2200, the same chipset found in the Galaxy S22 series in select regions.

When pressed on that matter, Chomet simply said: “For now, we’re limiting Galaxy AI to last-gen devices.”

So, hardware doesn’t seem to be the sole reason Samsung is limiting these features to newer devices.

While Samsung isn’t directly saying it, we’d speculate that the company’s reasoning here comes down to cost. Some Galaxy AI features run entirely on-device, but most require backend work in the cloud, specifically on Google’s Gemini models, and that’s not free. Samsung itself is teasing that these features may eventually require payment, but there’s no word on when that might take effect. The company also very much hints that will be the case by mentioning it doesn’t know the “impact… [on] cloud resources.”

The Samsung Galaxy S24 series is available for pre-order now, starting at $799. Pre-orders come with doubled storage, boosted trade-ins up to $750, and bonus credit up to $150.

You can get an additional $50 off your purchase on Samsung.com using our exclusive links above.