Best AI phones: quick menu
The best AI phone is a phone with the most advanced hardware, the latest software, and the newest features you’ll find on a mobile device. Artificial intelligence, machine learning – whatever you call it – is the biggest thing to happen to smartphones since foldable displays, and it will be even bigger before long.
Google uses the latest Gemini AI on its Pixel 8 Pro and the Pixel 8 family. Samsung offers Galaxy AI on its Galaxy S24 lineup. Older Pixel and Galaxy phones, like the Pixel Fold and the Galaxy Z foldable phones, have received select AI features, but not the whole package.
Apple recently announced that its AI, Apple Intelligence, is coming to the best iPhones, including the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. If you had any doubt that AI is the next big thing on smartphones, Apple put that doubt to rest.
These AI phones are improving dramatically, so keep an eye on this list, especially as we approach the launch of iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence on the iPhone. Until then, here are the best AI phones for photography, writing, answering questions, and everything you can imagine.
Quick List
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is the smartphone leader for the latest AI models from Google, so if you want to see what all the fuss is about (and get ready for the future), check out Google’s latest powerhouse Pro model.
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2. Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus
Samsung’s Galaxy AI does the best job offering writing style changes and suggestions, and the Galaxy S24 Plus has a bigger, sharper screen that makes typing and messaging easier to read.
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3. Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
The Galaxy S24 Ultra is legendary for its camera features, and AI plays a big part. When you take that stunning moon photo, AI recognizes the scene and adjusts your settings to make sure its perfect.
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Google’s Photo Unblur, Magic Editor, and the new Audio Eraser are the best AI editing tools for photos and videos, and the Pixel 8 also has great cameras for the right price, making this our photo editing favorite.
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Bixby on the Samsung Galaxy S24 is the best voice assistant you’ll find on any smartphone today, much better than today’s Siri, and it will likely get even better as Samsung adds more Galaxy AI.
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The Pixel 8a will get seven years of software updates, which hopefully includes seven years of AI advancements. Sound too good to be true? For this low price, you can take the risk.
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The best AI phone 2024
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The best overall AI phone
The best AI phone you can buy right now is the Google Pixel 8 Pro. Google has gone all-in on AI with its latest Pixel family. You can start by downloading Google Gemini, which replaces Google Assistant as your voice interface, with control over numerous other Google apps and features.
The Pixel 8 Pro was the first phone to load the Gemini Nano LLM directly on the device, and with the most RAM and the most advanced hardware of any Pixel 8 phone, the Pixel 8 Pro seems the most likely to live up to Google’s astonishing promise to support this phone for seven years of AI updates.
Frankly, we can hardly imagine what AI will look like in three months, let alone seven years, so this is a lofty promise. But the Pixel 8 Pro is an excellent phone today, no matter what the future brings.
The Pixel 8 Pro has a fantastic camera that uses AI to adjust for the scene you are shooting, and Google Photos offers the best AI photo editing tools you’ll find on a smartphone. You can even edit photos and videos that you didn’t shoot with a Pixel phone, as long as they are saved to Google Photos.
The Pixel 8 Pro voice recorder is a lifesaver if you need to record interviews, meetings, or other important audio moments. Google’s other AI features, like the latest Circle to Search feature, are helpful, but not game changing.
It’s the overall package of what the Pixel 8 Pro offers, and the promise of so much more to come, that makes the Google Pixel 8 Pro our first ever pick for the best AI phone you can buy. Just like AI, that choice could change quickly.
Read our full Google Pixel 8 Pro review
The best AI writing phone
The Galaxy S24 Plus is the phone I recommend if you want AI to help you write better messages. In my side-by-side test of all the latest AI phones, Samsung‘s Galaxy AI did the best job by far with generative AI writing features, and the Galaxy S24 Plus has a big, bright screen that gives you a larger keyboard and a better view of what you’re writing.
Wherever you can type on the latest Galaxy phones, you can use Galaxy AI to change your writing style, check your spelling and grammar, or even translate your message into a different language.
You can change your writing style to a tone that sounds professional, casual, polite, or ‘#social,’ which means loaded with emoji. The Galaxy offered smart, sensible suggestions every time that wouldn’t make me look foolish if I used the AI instead of my own words. It even attached clever emoji and hashtags that were funny in context.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the case everywhere, not even with language and writing. Samsung’s voice recorder app can write a transcript or a summary of a recording, but it wasn’t as fast or accurate as Google’s Pixel Recorder.
Samsung followed close behind Google with AI features, and also with that amazing promise to support the latest Galaxy S24 Plus for seven years of software updates, which will hopefully include AI. Galaxy AI isn’t quite as robust as Google’s AI software, but it’s already ahead when it comes to writing styles.
Of course, Samsung’s big advantage over Google is that its AI writing is tied to the keyboard, not the Messages or Email app, so you can use AI to help fix or change your writing where you can type on the Galaxy S24 Plus.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus review
The best AI camera phone
The Galaxy S24 Ultra isn’t just our pick for the best AI camera phone, it’s the best camera phone you can buy overall. The Galaxy S24 Ultra offers the most versatile camera system we’ve seen on a smartphone, with smart improvements over its indomitable predecessor, and it’s the AI scene detection and shooting modes that really make it our favorite, more than any single spec.
Sure, there’s a 200MP sensor on the S24 Ultra, but that’s not the sensor you’ll use to take the most amazing photo of the moon you’ve ever taken with any camera, ever (unless you’re a pro). Samsung dialed back the zoom to 5x (versus 10x on the Galaxy S23 Ultra), but its scene optimization software, which relies on AI, produces even better results than before, thanks to a larger sensor and better processing.
Everything you shoot with the Galaxy S24 Ultra looks better than photos taken with other smartphones. Did you bake amazing cookies? They’ll look delicious with the S24 Ultra camera, while an iPhone might render them a bit cool and unappealing.
Portraits look great, and so do macro shots, selfie photos, and all the videos you’ll shoot with this camera. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is like carrying a bag of lenses everywhere, so you’ll always nail the shot, thanks to the impressive features and great software processing.
Is it worth paying so much for this phone? If you want the best camera, absolutely. If you think you don’t need the S Pen, you might reconsider when you find out it can be a remote control for the camera, in addition to its other hidden features.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review
The best AI photo editing phone
Google came out swinging with smartphone AI when it introduced the first AI photo editing features on Pixel phones. You won’t find photo editing features on any other smartphone that work as well as Pixel’s Google Photos editing. And the Pixel 8 is the right combination of price and power to make it our pick if using AI to edit photos is your primary concern.
Today’s Pixel 8 has Photo Unblur, Magic Eraser, and Magic Editor, all of which help fix up your pics and remove unwanted distractions, making your subjects stand out. You also get the amazing new Audio Eraser for videos, which can remove background noise, chattering neighbors, and unwanted music from your videos. It’s a real game changer for recording.
Google doesn’t limit editing to photos you took with the Pixel 8. Any photos that you’ve backed up to Google Photos can be edited with the Pixel. Even if your last phone was an iPhone, you can make those pics look better with a new Pixel 8. For Photo Unblur alone, the Pixel 8 is a good investment if you have a library of old pics you want to quickly fix.
The Pixel 8 is eligible for up to seven years of updates from Google, including these AI features. Right now, Google Gemini cannot edit or adjust photos that you upload, though it can understand what’s in those pictures. Hopefully, Google’s AI will eventually be able to make more creative generative edits to photos, like Adobe Firefly, but time will tell.
Read our full Google Pixel 8 review
The best AI voice assistant phone
If you want to control your smartphone using your voice, the Galaxy S24 with Bixby does the best job of listening to you and understanding your commands. In a head-to-head test against Google Gemini and Apple iOS 17.5 with Siri (not the Apple Intelligence version, in other words), Bixby was by far the most effective voice assistant for every task. There was almost nothing Siri could do that Bixby could not, but Siri failed at many tasks that Bixby handled with ease.
Bixby was designed to be a voice interface, not a chatty assistant, which makes it better at controlling features and functions on your phone. Google and Apple are slowly adding these capabilities to Siri and Gemini, but those assistants don’t come close to what Bixby can do you for you right now.
Bixby did the best job understanding when our word choice wasn’t perfect. It handled multi-step tasks, and it was able to search and use other Samsung apps on the Galaxy S24 to get the job done.
Best of all, Samsung hasn’t even started to really evolve Bixby with the latest Galaxy AI language models. Bixby is relatively primitive compared to Google Gemini, but it’s much more effective.
Hopefully, when Samsung finally give Bixby the big AI upgrade, it will only get better, though we’ve seen growing pains with Google Gemini, so it could get worse, first.
Read the full review: Samsung Galaxy S24
The best AI bargain phone
If you want the best AI for phone for less than $500 / £500 / AU$850, you need the Pixel 8a. The Pixel 8a has the same Google Tensor G3 processor as the Pixel 8 Pro, so it should be able to run almost all of the same AI features. It also has the same seven year promise for software and major Android updates, so Google must be plenty confident in its bargain phone to believe it will keep up with the Pixel 8 Pro until 2031.
Just like with the Pixel 8 Pro, you can load Google Gemini on the Pixel 8a. It can even run the Gemini Nano LLM on the device itself, though this is reserved as a developer option for now, so most AI computing will be done in the cloud.
You get the same Pixel Recorder that blows us away on the Pixel 8 Pro, and the same photo editing features that we love from the Pixel 8, albeit on a smaller display. The cameras aren’t as good as the more expensive Pixel phones, but performance is otherwise very similar, and you really can’t beat that price.
If you want AI help with writing messages, summarizing the news you read on the web, or recording your 8am Chemistry lecture, the Pixel 8a can get the job done. It offers real, advanced AI features. Plus, the Pixel 8a is a bargain now, and it’s also likely to see discounts throughout the year, so keep an eye on this one if you want to save big money on big compute.
Best AI phone FAQ
What is an AI phone?
What does Artificial Intelligence on a smartphone really mean?
An AI phone has the latest software and a processor with a neural processing unit (NPU) to run machine learning models. It uses machine learning software to create new features. These may include generative AI features that can write or create images, or organizational AI features that can offer app suggestions and organize notifications.
Do I need AI on my phone?
For now, AI offers extra features that augment and improve your phone experience, but AI is not necessary. Some AI features, like Google Gemini, do not come preloaded on a phone, but other features, like Galaxy AI, are part of the phone’s operating system. Apple is adding Apple Intelligence to select phone models, but not every iPhone will support AI in the near future.
Is there really AI on a smartphone?
Is there really an artificial intelligence on the best AI phones?
No, the best AI phones do not possess intelligence or have a general artificial intelligence, like in science fiction. When we say a phone uses AI, we mean that it uses machine learning techniques to employ models that create and augment features. A phone might use a large language model to change your writing into new styles, for instance, or an image generation model to create wallpapers and Genmoji. No smartphone can think independently, or create its own ideas.
What should I look for when buying an AI phone?
Do you have a specific need for an AI phone, or are you just interested in taking a peek into the future? AI is useful right now if you need to transcribe audio recordings, or translate conversations, or even if you just struggle with writing messages and want help. If you want to edit photos, especially older photos taken with blurry, ancient smartphones, an AI phone can help improve your old pictures and videos. If you just want to stay ahead of the future, pick the best AI phone overall.
Does the iPhone have AI?
Do only Android phones offer AI, or does the iPhone have AI?
Apple uses machine learning and AI software to improve your iPhone experience in ways you won’t notice, but Apple’s future Apple Intelligence features won’t be available on the iPhone until the launch of iOS 18, likely happening September 2024. Even then, only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will be able to take advantage of Apple Intelligence features, in addition to any new iPhone models that support AI. Older iPhone models will likely never get Apple Intelligence features.
Should I wait to buy an AI phone?
Is AI good enough now, or should I wait until AI phones get better?
There are great, useful AI features available on some of the best phones you can buy right now. While the iPhone is still waiting, phones like the Pixel 8 Pro are already offering generative AI photo editing, ideas and brainstorming, and writing tools across a number of productivity apps. Google and Samsung have also promised seven years of major Android updates for the latest Pixel 8 and Galaxy S24 phones, so it is highly likely even those phones will improve as the respective AI software gets better.
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philip.berne@futurenet.com (Philip Berne)
