I'd rather have flagship specs in a smaller package. The smallest in the iPhone (SE) and Pixel ("A"?) lines are still too big and tend to have previous-gen specs
I feel like many of the commenters in this thread are asking (sometimes demanding) that their devices offer a duality that can’t be met; do you want smaller phones or do you want longer battery life with more compute? At the moment, those are mutually exclusive goals. Thermodynamics can be a PITA but we’re doing (almost) the best we can.
My opinion is that most of the real uses of AI (like ML has always been) will be largely hidden things that are LLM based but not screaming at your face "AI". Particularly once the bubble pops and money stops being shoved into things just sticking an LLM in a pretty package with little to no value.
Some of the things coming in iOS like notification summaries and similar features are big examples. It's clearly LLM based but it's not a lot of the shoving AI needlessly into things that we are seeing now and provides a true improvement given the notification overload that we have right now.
You can see the wisdom of how Apple is approaching this. In particular, to be on device whenever possible so as not to be dependent on network bandwidth, and to tie features to new hardware (to drive sales).
Exactly. Ask customers "do you want AI in your phone?" and their response will probably be "meh", as shown in the article. But ask "do you want notification summaries, a better camera in low light, Siri to be able to look up more things, searchable photos, etc?" - and they absolutely will.
I can understand why. Most of the generative AI crap we're being force-fed these days is a solution looking for a problem. On my Samsung, the only really useful AI features they provide are erasing things in photos and upscaling. The generation is weak compared to even basic stable diffusion and otherwise they're all fluff features and sometimes give me the same vibes as the "Make Longer" feature on Notion. As far as apps go, I really don't need a chatbot in every app.
I have a hard time seeing how this isn't obvious. 95% of everyday AI needs (for the people that even bother to interact with it) are covered by ChatGPT, and most of that is the same stuff that Google was handling before.
From personal experience, the only thing that changed when replacing the "old" Google Assistant with the Gemini-powered one on my Pixel was that it's no longer able to create reminders.
Here, it is more like the smartphone market is stagnating and manufacturers need something to encourage people to buy new smartphones instead of keeping the one they already have.
They are already doing planned obsolescence, with hard to replace batteries, limited software support combined with closed systems, etc... But they can't abuse it, as regulatory agencies are already after them and customers are starting to notice. They had a go with cameras, as it is a significant differentiator, but nowadays, most smartphone cameras are as good as they can be for what they are used for.
And it turns out that AI is the big hype right now, so of course, they are using as a selling point.
The funny part is that "AI" (machine learning techniques) have been running in smartphones for a while (I'd say a decade), hidden in camera software. How do you think these tiny cameras can do pictures that look so good? But they mostly kept quiet about it, as it had implications of making "fakes". And yeah, stuff like Siri that works mostly on servers, you don't need a phone with "AI capabilities" for that, just internet access, but they are certainly going to put in in their ads.
I actively don’t want AI, on-device or not. But with the near monopolies on these devices there isn’t a way to vote with your wallet. We’re getting whether we want it or not.
It's incredible how bad it is. It actually seems to be getting worse year by year. I nearly crashed my car on the freeway trying to set a reminder to pay a toll the other day - I changed my mind and tried to get siri to cancel the action, and no matter what I said, she kept asking "what time? what time? what time?" on endless loop, and when siri is activated on my car's dashboard, I can't see the map - forcing me to avert my attention from the road, disconnect my phone, then plug it back in and pull my map up again.
She can't do or understand the most astoundingly basic stuff. I guess maybe it "feels" worse now because most LLM's are pretty good at understanding your meaning/intention, but my god, it's so bad that if I were in charge of that product I'd rip it out entirely. There's no way anyone finds any real use out of it.
I need better speech to text. I have to repeat my text message 5+ times sometimes when sending it through carplay. I'm not talking about anything long either. A handful of words that my accent just doesn't work with. More than once per day I get fed up enough to pull over and text it.
I have a bunch of "premium" smart outlets(eve energy, some are "THREAD" enabled, all the bells and whistles) all named and connected to things I want to toggle with voice: a small radiator, an air purifier, a humidifier, some accent lamps, a fan, an infrared therapy lamp etc. -Before anyone asks, I ordered the European version of their energy strip for higher wattage stuff-. I give each one a clear and unambiguous name, and still, at least one in ten times Siri will be confused about what I'm asking and turn off EVERY SINGLE OUTLET IN THE ROOM. It's endlessly frustrating. For what it's worth the outlets never de-sync or disconnect like the random amazon ones do so I blame it purely on Siri.
siri’s speech recognition and intent handling is so comically bad. as of late, for some unknown reason, when i ask siri to favourite the current song while driving it curtly replies that it doesn’t know which speaker i’m referring to. this used to work.
another fun problem is siri not recognising my speech despite me not having a particularly strong accent, speaking slowly, and enunciating. i’ve gotten into the habit putting on a valley girl or bbc news anchor voice while using siri since that usually works.
whoever is in charge of siri needs a reality check, the feature is borderline unusable.
It’s gotta be just barely holding on in some legacy environment right now. I’m surprised they don’t just start over using new tech. Maybe that’s the end goal with on-device inference to sunset cloud Siri.
The AI integration I'm looking for isn't to make chatgpt like queries or generate images or find one of my pictures, but to control my damn phone at a much more granular level. Settings are often getting removed or hidden or moved around to the point where controlling your device is a nightmare. Some examples of deeper configuration I'd love to see available:
- "Hey siri, stop interrupting my audiobooks and music with Teams notifications."
- "Could you please tone down the number of audio GPS alerts you send me? I don't need to be told five times before an exit that my exit is coming up. You're interrupting my audiobook too much."
- "Why are you interrupting my audiobook again?"
- "I don't know why soundless gifs keep stopping my audiobook, will you cut that shit out?"
- "Please let me use this audiobook app concurrently with this other app which has all sounds muted"
Maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer to spend less of my life on my phone in general. Seems like first-party integration of AI features is just a ploy to persuade me to use it more, since the appeal of novel apps or software features has long since died out.
Smartphones are an absolute graveyard of fads; remember the 3D screen phones, the phones with projectors, and so forth? They generally go nowhere. I suspect 'AI' on phones will be similar.
Overwhelmingly, what people want out of phones is "like my current phone, but with better battery life and maybe a better camera." Previously 'faster' was also a concern, but modern phones are largely Good Enough.
There's a lot we quietly take for granted. Supposedly the NPUs on phones were originally added to let the phone identify objects in your photo library. When shopping for phones, I tend to shop for better battery and camera... but I also wouldn't go back to a photo library without identification.
Even camera improvements are overblown. My usage and photo quality did not improve much since ~iPhone 6. Taking decent travel photos, selfies, etc - I was happy with the results 10 years ago.
Technically, I understand the difference in the technology, I just don't know who needs that vs who gets excited about new features for a brief moment.
My favorite one (in the sense of "most useless") is Amazon's Fire Phone, which had multiple cameras so it could figure out where your face is relative to the screen, which would enable some crazy 3D effect.
I've been trying the iOS Beta 18.2 and here's my impression of Apple Intelligence:
It's not bad, it's really really bad.
The image clean-up feature is utterly useless, and I think it's one of the areas where we can clearly see the difference between a company for whom Generative AI is an afterthought (Apple), and the competition. I paid $1500 for the new iPhone Pro Max and a great part of the deal was the Apple Intelligence support, but frankly, I might as well switch to Android at this point because I'm really disappointed at Apple's take on AI. I'll probably wait until the official Apple Intelligence is introduced but tbh I don't think there will be much improvements over this version.
And as for Siri: It's as stupid as it ever was. I ask it to convert something from lbs to kg and it responds "there's no music playing". If anything, its natural language comprehension has degraded.
Currently, there's no context awareness, so I still can't ask Siri "how do I respond to this email?".
Really, the only thing that "works" is the ChatGPT feature that describes an image you send it. Anything Apple-related is bonkers. It's really embarrassing.
For it to have value they need to effectively apply it for something useful and have it be reliable, not just go hey we have llms. like if i could say siri share my location with my wife and text her "im on my way" oh and send her a pic of what im looking at through my sunglasses. And it worked 99% of the time, and could figure out to do it through google maps because she has android, that would be great.
And, to me, none of that even sounds like AI. Just an assistant app, smart glasses, and google maps not being shit. I can't think of a reason, other than the reasons I already use ChatGPT and the AI object eraser, that I would need AI on my phone. Most of the crap they pump out is just a solution looking for a problem.
Exactly. I remember imagining naively in 2010 that the introduction of Siri meant I would be able to just ask my phone to do simple things like update settings or manipulate the built-in apps using natural language, things chatGPT could easily do even a year ago if it had the needed API hooks. Including doing things on a schedule, compound sentences, etc. Instead we got a very brittle text adventure that can neither correctly transcribe your words, let alone understand your intention, and it’s never even changed.
“Siri get me directions to McDonald’s”
‘I found this on the web for you:’ <serp for “Direct In Donald”>
Or it would get directions to a McDonalds in a different state. Or say “I’m sorry, I don’t see a McDonald in your contacts.”
The phone manufacturers have to know this, right? they've got market surveys and focus groups and internal dogfooding programs. they all know that a half-baked chatbot experience is going to sell zero phones.
All this AI marketing push has got to be because they think investors are stupid, and they can fool the market into thinking they're doing an AI.
My Sonim XP3+ has a hard shell replaceable battery and lasts a week and a half on a charge. It's not even a very expensive device, it's under $150! ;) But it is a flip phone running Android Go with no apps...
That said, I think the tradeoffs being made right now are probably the right ones. Apple's latest devices have gone to an electrically released sort of adhesive (versus the older pull-strip removeable adhesive, which is a big step up from the "glue it in" approach many vendors take), and for a given volume, you get more battery if you can rely on the phone to protect it from damage - which is why almost everything with an internal battery uses some variety of pouch cell. They're quite a bit more fragile than the hard-cased batteries, but you get a lot more battery in the volume than you do with the hard cased ones.
As long as it's not incredibly irritating to replace the battery, I'm fine optimizing the daily use thing (battery life in a given phone size) over the once-every-few-years thing (replacing the battery).
What surprises me about the story is how weak the effect is, which is stripped by the title mangler: only 25% of users report not finding AI features helpful.
AI is a means to an end - it's the end that people want (or don't want). For example people like fast and accurate spell check - they don't care whether AI did it or not.
[+] [-] brianshaler|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dageshi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tra3|1 year ago|reply
I would love the new features (especially the camera and sat comm) but I’m not willing to get a bigger form factor device.
[+] [-] mmmore|1 year ago|reply
https://youtu.be/iR9zBsKELVs?si=3o1qD-4R7lyezZwt
[+] [-] tharant|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] knallfrosch|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dwayne_dibley|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdjon|1 year ago|reply
Some of the things coming in iOS like notification summaries and similar features are big examples. It's clearly LLM based but it's not a lot of the shoving AI needlessly into things that we are seeing now and provides a true improvement given the notification overload that we have right now.
[+] [-] slashdave|1 year ago|reply
You can see the wisdom of how Apple is approaching this. In particular, to be on device whenever possible so as not to be dependent on network bandwidth, and to tie features to new hardware (to drive sales).
[+] [-] KeytarHero|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] chankstein38|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mondobe|1 year ago|reply
From personal experience, the only thing that changed when replacing the "old" Google Assistant with the Gemini-powered one on my Pixel was that it's no longer able to create reminders.
[+] [-] aiono|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] GuB-42|1 year ago|reply
They are already doing planned obsolescence, with hard to replace batteries, limited software support combined with closed systems, etc... But they can't abuse it, as regulatory agencies are already after them and customers are starting to notice. They had a go with cameras, as it is a significant differentiator, but nowadays, most smartphone cameras are as good as they can be for what they are used for.
And it turns out that AI is the big hype right now, so of course, they are using as a selling point.
The funny part is that "AI" (machine learning techniques) have been running in smartphones for a while (I'd say a decade), hidden in camera software. How do you think these tiny cameras can do pictures that look so good? But they mostly kept quiet about it, as it had implications of making "fakes". And yeah, stuff like Siri that works mostly on servers, you don't need a phone with "AI capabilities" for that, just internet access, but they are certainly going to put in in their ads.
[+] [-] Nicholas_C|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bobro|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] amateuring|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] agentultra|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hkon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] brtkdotse|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnMakin|1 year ago|reply
She can't do or understand the most astoundingly basic stuff. I guess maybe it "feels" worse now because most LLM's are pretty good at understanding your meaning/intention, but my god, it's so bad that if I were in charge of that product I'd rip it out entirely. There's no way anyone finds any real use out of it.
[+] [-] jermaustin1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] neither_color|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] xp84|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] techbrovanguard|1 year ago|reply
another fun problem is siri not recognising my speech despite me not having a particularly strong accent, speaking slowly, and enunciating. i’ve gotten into the habit putting on a valley girl or bbc news anchor voice while using siri since that usually works.
whoever is in charge of siri needs a reality check, the feature is borderline unusable.
[+] [-] yellow_lead|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] binarymax|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] NotYourLawyer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tstrimple|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jonplackett|1 year ago|reply
> A quarter of smartphone owners (25%) don't find AI features helpful,
So does that mean 75% _do_ find AI Feature helpful?
> 45% are reluctant to pay a monthly subscription fee for AI capabilities
Are 55% happy to pay a monthly fee?
>34% have privacy concerns.
66% have no privacy concerns?
[+] [-] FireSquid2006|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] brailsafe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|1 year ago|reply
Smartphones are an absolute graveyard of fads; remember the 3D screen phones, the phones with projectors, and so forth? They generally go nowhere. I suspect 'AI' on phones will be similar.
Overwhelmingly, what people want out of phones is "like my current phone, but with better battery life and maybe a better camera." Previously 'faster' was also a concern, but modern phones are largely Good Enough.
[+] [-] ip26|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] changing1999|1 year ago|reply
Technically, I understand the difference in the technology, I just don't know who needs that vs who gets excited about new features for a brief moment.
[+] [-] chihuahua|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] x0x0|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eleveriven|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] behnamoh|1 year ago|reply
It's not bad, it's really really bad.
The image clean-up feature is utterly useless, and I think it's one of the areas where we can clearly see the difference between a company for whom Generative AI is an afterthought (Apple), and the competition. I paid $1500 for the new iPhone Pro Max and a great part of the deal was the Apple Intelligence support, but frankly, I might as well switch to Android at this point because I'm really disappointed at Apple's take on AI. I'll probably wait until the official Apple Intelligence is introduced but tbh I don't think there will be much improvements over this version.
And as for Siri: It's as stupid as it ever was. I ask it to convert something from lbs to kg and it responds "there's no music playing". If anything, its natural language comprehension has degraded.
Currently, there's no context awareness, so I still can't ask Siri "how do I respond to this email?".
Really, the only thing that "works" is the ChatGPT feature that describes an image you send it. Anything Apple-related is bonkers. It's really embarrassing.
[+] [-] tracerbulletx|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] chankstein38|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] xp84|1 year ago|reply
“Siri get me directions to McDonald’s” ‘I found this on the web for you:’ <serp for “Direct In Donald”>
Or it would get directions to a McDonalds in a different state. Or say “I’m sorry, I don’t see a McDonald in your contacts.”
[+] [-] notatoad|1 year ago|reply
All this AI marketing push has got to be because they think investors are stupid, and they can fool the market into thinking they're doing an AI.
[+] [-] lopkeny12ko|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Syonyk|1 year ago|reply
That said, I think the tradeoffs being made right now are probably the right ones. Apple's latest devices have gone to an electrically released sort of adhesive (versus the older pull-strip removeable adhesive, which is a big step up from the "glue it in" approach many vendors take), and for a given volume, you get more battery if you can rely on the phone to protect it from damage - which is why almost everything with an internal battery uses some variety of pouch cell. They're quite a bit more fragile than the hard-cased batteries, but you get a lot more battery in the volume than you do with the hard cased ones.
As long as it's not incredibly irritating to replace the battery, I'm fine optimizing the daily use thing (battery life in a given phone size) over the once-every-few-years thing (replacing the battery).
[+] [-] jollyllama|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] JadeNB|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mouse_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AdamN|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] alexashka|1 year ago|reply
Providers want to drip feed and charge for 'improvements' indefinitely.
AI is the next drip feed.