Samsung signals shift from smartphone to ‘AI phone’ era

New Delhi: The smartphone era is moving towards an ‘AI phone’ phase that will redefine how users interact with devices, according to a senior Samsung executive.

Samsung Research Institute-Bengaluru (SRI-B) Managing Director Mohan Rao Goli said artificial intelligence has already changed the way cameras function and is now transforming calls by eliminating language barriers.

"We are also moving the needle from the smartphone era to the AI phone era. This requires a new platform. The Galaxy AI platform is very basic to bring it to the AI phone era. AI is becoming the new user interface for consumers. It is not like the touch-and-go. It is about the new way to interact with these devices," Goli said.

SRI-B is Samsung’s second-largest research centre after South Korea and works on software technologies that are integrated into Samsung devices in collaboration with other research hubs of the company.

Highlighting real-time translation features under the Galaxy AI platform, Goli said: "It is close to the real time, for example, my friend is speaking in French, the way he is speaking in French, whatever I get, I can get it in Hindi itself, right. And the consumers are liking this particular feature, and then they gave positive feedback about this."

He added that Samsung is evaluating open-source AI technologies to support such features, but acknowledged that advances in battery technology are necessary to meet the power demands of AI.

Although large language models are available, Goli said they must be calibrated for mobile devices to balance power and performance. "We have to utilise all the sensors available in the phone to come up with the software algorithm, which is powered by the AI model, to do this switch over very seamlessly," he said.

Referring to Samsung’s flagship Fold and Flip devices launched in India in July, Goli noted the research challenges. "It was very challenging because of the nature of the Fold 7 and Flip 7. It required very deep technology research to come up with a meaningful algorithm without compromising the user experiences," he said.

Samsung began selling the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Flip 7 FE and Flip 7 in India from July at prices ranging between Rs 89,999 and Rs 2.1 lakh.

Goli said AI models are already running on these devices despite the constraints. "We faced challenges with the power budget and the performance budget and created that accuracy and met the quality goals," he added.

He said the transition will take time but will be more significant than the shift from feature phones to smartphones. "The smartphone to AI phone transition is going to be much bigger, because the feature phone to smartphone transition did not happen overnight. The smartphone-to-AI phone transition will happen, but will take some time. Galaxy AI is the platform for that transition to happen," he said.