Will Samsung's new Galaxy AI features come to older devices? Here's what we know
Samsung is "assessing" the situation
- The Galaxy S25 lineup is the first to get many new Galaxy AI features.
- Samsung is currently "assessing which features" might arrive on other Galaxy devices.
- Historically, Galaxy AI features have arrived in short order on older devices.
Samsung finally made the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus, and Galaxy S25 Ultra official at its first Galaxy Unpacked event of 2025, and along with the new hardware, a number of new features for Galaxy AI were unveiled.
While the Samsung Galaxy S25 preorder deals are impressive, you might be reading this very news story on a Galaxy S24 Ultra, Galaxy Z Flip 6, or even a Galaxy Z Fold 6, and thinking that these are still pretty new phones – and wondering if some of these new features might be arriving on your device in a future update. Well, we already know that One UI 7 with call transcriptions will be arriving on the S24 lineup.
As for other AI-powered features such as Samsung's Personal Data Engine, Now Brief, and improvements to generative image features, it’s not yet clear which devices these features might eventually land on.
Personal Data Engine is basically a dedicated core on the device for handling AI tasks and building out a personal large language model (LLM) to the phones owner, to help the AI serve up better suggestions and implement them. Now Brief is an app that changes through the day to show pertinent information.
Speaking to TechRadar, a Samsung spokesperson told us the company is “assessing which features” can come to which devices.
In full, Samsung states: “Nothing to share right now, but Samsung is committed to providing the best possible Galaxy experience to all our users, and we are assessing which features will be available on which devices.”
Clearly, the focus is on the S25 range, and it seems that a lot of these new Galaxy AI features were tailor-made for the new lineup thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip, which has a specific processor unit dedicated for AI tasks. That processor is paired with 12GB of RAM across the lineup – no more 8GB for the 'standard' model.
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Samsung's really aiming to integrate Galaxy AI throughout the entire phone, allowing it to learn how you use it and the other apps on it. Ideally, the Now Brief app will work with Galaxy AI at its core, and in the dedicated part of the processor acting as a personal LLM to serve up the right suggestions and cards to you. It could be that you have a busy day with a look at your calendar, a reminder that it's someone's birthday and to create a digital card, or even a suggestion about your commute home. In a demo, I also saw cards for the weather and even news stories that might interest you, but as with most AI features it'll take some time for these features to learn your habits and routines.
The Galaxy S25 lineup follows the idea of 'agentic AI' that we’ve been hearing about, and will likely see more of in 2025. It remains to be seen how much of this relies on that new processor, or if Samsung can figure out a way to trickle this down further.
Even so, the ability to ask Gemini to complete chain requests – for instance, asking when the next New York Jets game is, adding it to your calendar, and sharing that invite with a friend – seems like it could arrive on other devices, and should be easy to roll out to them with Gemini – Google has even confirmed that. Integrating Gemini with, say, Samsung Notes and other third-party apps will likely take a bit longer, but could likely be introduced via an update.
The same thought process could apply to the improvements to generating images, and improvements to Samsung’s native tool for removing people from the background of photos that were unveiled for the Galaxy S25 family. Samsung so far has a good track record of rolling its AI features out to older phones, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope that some of these new Galaxy AI features trickle down.
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Jacob Krol is the US Managing Editor, News for TechRadar. He’s been writing about technology since he was 14 when he started his own tech blog. Since then Jacob has worked for a plethora of publications including CNN Underscored, TheStreet, Parade, Men’s Journal, Mashable, CNET, and CNBC among others.
He specializes in covering companies like Apple, Samsung, and Google and going hands-on with mobile devices, smart home gadgets, TVs, and wearables. In his spare time, you can find Jacob listening to Bruce Springsteen, building a Lego set, or binge-watching the latest from Disney, Marvel, or Star Wars.
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