Samsung’s biannual Galaxy Unpacked event is typically big on flashy new mobile hardware, but at this year’s event—held today in San Jose, California—it’s the software that takes the limelight. Powering the new Samsung Galaxy S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra is Galaxy AI, the catchall term for many of the new smart features debuting in the handsets.
Many of these functions (but not all) are powered by Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence model, and some of them already exist on Google’s own Pixel smartphones. Google has long dominated Search simply by being the default option everywhere—now it’s employing a similar strategy in leveraging Android to bring its AI prowess to a wider stage.
At the event, Samsung also announced the Galaxy Ring, which is a brand-new product category for the company. It didn’t share many details other than how this smart ring will be closely integrated with the Samsung Health app and its wealth of features. Over the past three years, smart rings have become more and more popular, with Oura leading the way and others like the Ultrahuman Ring Air following suit. We’ll update this story as we learn more.Forget the phones for a minute so we can talk about Galaxy AI. There’s a mix of on-device (via Gemini Nano) and cloud-based AI smarts (via Gemini Pro) on the Galaxy S24 series, though Samsung leans more heavily on the latter. If you see a star icon somewhere on the screen, that’s an indication that there’s a special AI function you can tap into. These interactions are powered by Google’s large language model.
For example, while on a phone call, tap the starry Call Assist button and now it’ll translate the call in real time, allowing you to speak with someone in another language, like the Universal Translator from Star Trek. (13 languages are supported.) I called a Samsung employee during a demonstration; he spoke Korean, but I heard him speak English, and vice versa. It was cool to be able to have a full conversation without having to look anything up, and while it wasn’t the swiftest back and forth, it felt speedy enough to keep the chat alive.
