Samsung announces new Galaxy S24 lineup with AI-powered photo editing, search features

SAMSUNG announced its new flagship Galaxy S24 smartphone range on Wednesday earlier than expected, boasting new artificial intelligence features as the company looks to usher in 2024 with a bang.

As is now standard across Samsung’s flagship range, the S24 range comes in three versions: S24, S24+ and S24 Ultra. The S24 Ultra starts at $1,300, the S24+ will cost $1,000, and the S24 will retail for $800.

Ahead of the announcement, the South Korean electronics giant showed off the new gadgets at its King’s Cross offices in London earlier this week. In a briefing with journalists, Samsung talked about the AI ​​capabilities of the phone and showed how it is able to edit pictures and discover objects using AI.

For Samsung’s top-tier S24 Ultra, which is the largest of the company’s three devices and comes with much better specs and features, Samsung is using a version Qualcomm’s Optimized for the latest Snapdragon Series 8 Gen 3 Galaxy. The company is using a mix of Qualcomm system-on-chips (SoCs) and its own Exynos chipsets for its S24 and S24+ models.

“The Galaxy S24 series of devices, along with Google’s Pixel range, mark the beginning of the consumerization of AI in smartphones,” Ben Wood, principal analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC. “This is a trend that will be replicated by all smartphone manufacturers, including Apple, as they increasingly add an increasing number of AI-powered capabilities to their new devices.”

“The launch sees Samsung bet on artificial intelligence-powered features to rekindle consumer interest in smartphones at a time when sales have slowed due to increased hardware updates. Google has been leading the way with its Pixel devices And there’s no doubt that this is going to be a recurring theme not just for smartphones but for all consumer electronics moving forward.”

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is the main event for most tech gadget enthusiasts – and, for the most part, it doesn’t look all that different from the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

This is because Samsung is not making too many changes with the hardware. It still comes in the same size as its predecessor – the display is 6.8 inches, measured diagonally, although this time the phone is flat. The S23 Ultra had more curvature.

The big upgrade to the external hardware of this model is that it’s covered in titanium, so it’s much sturdier than the S23 Ultra.

The main difference this time is what’s inside: Samsung is working big on artificial intelligence. Like other smartphone makers, Samsung’s main focus is now on “on-demand” AI – or, the ability to move AI workloads directly to the device rather than to the cloud.

Samsung said its new Galaxy S24 Ultra will come with a number of new AI features, many of which are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset for mobiles, which is tailor-made for AI devices.

This hints at something that many smartphone makers have been focusing on recently. Consumers aren’t as excited about new smartphone upgrades as they used to be. So phone manufacturers have had to come up with new ideas to attract people’s attention again and increase excitement in the market.

One feature Samsung is loading onto the Galaxy S24 range is the ability to circle places or objects the user is directing their camera at, or at a photo they’ve taken, and then see the results on those things Is.

So, for example, if you see a landmark or a shoe you want to buy, you can draw a circle around that item and then the AI ​​shows you the appropriate results on Google.

Another feature promoted by Samsung is the ability to use AI to edit photos. So users can edit the reflections of the photos they take, for example if you took a photo of yourself in front of a window. Or you can move a person from one side of the room to the other by dragging them from left to right.

Samsung also demonstrated live transcription features with its latest smartphones.

For example, when calling someone who speaks in French, the user can pull up a transcription that is being fed to them in real time. You can also record a conversation between two people and have it transcribed, while the AI ​​assigns a label to each person speaking, similar to transcription products like Otter AI.

PP Foresight’s Paolo Pescatore told CNBC that Samsung should “focus efforts on maintaining its core loyal premium base.”

“of course [Samsung] has done more than enough with new features powered by its own AI platform,” Pescatoer said. “This could potentially be the beginning of a new era for smartphones representing a major super cycle for Samsung “

“With this in mind, Samsung will need to entice users with competitive offers suitable for everyone; this includes older Samsung owners who will inevitably be looking for a much-needed upgrade.”

Another thing Samsung has to think about is what its AI features mean for things like privacy and copyright infringement.

The past year has seen countless examples of people using AI to create illustrations and other creative media and present it as their own work – even when, in some cases, it is derived from or based on the artists’ work. Looks similar.

So when a Galaxy S24 user uses AI to modify a photo, Samsung will keep a log of what was changed with the AI ​​and store it in the metadata. There will also be an icon in the lower left corner that will show that the image has been edited using AI, like a watermark.

At the Samsung briefing in King’s Cross, some analysts and journalists were able to crop this icon using Samsung’s in-app cropping feature – although the icon is still kept in the metadata.

“AI-powered image and video manipulation raises some ethical questions, especially given the recent media attention regarding deep fake content,” Wood told CNBC. “Adding watermarks and updated metadata for changed content is a creative move by Samsung and I’m sure others will follow suit.”

“The success of Samsung’s AI-based features will largely depend on Samsung’s ability to drive consumer awareness and engagement through its marketing for the Galaxy S24 portfolio,” he said. “Success will require clear communication of benefits and continued expansion of use cases.”