When Samsung announced Galaxy AI alongside the Galaxy S24 series, one of everyone’s first questions was: will older phones get these cool features? After all, Samsung has one of the industry-leading update policies, with modern phones getting five to seven years of major updates, raising expectations for fast, long-term feature support.
In just a few months, Samsung has released its One UI 6.1 update, complete with Galaxy AI, for the Galaxy S23 series and Tab S9 family, as well as foldable devices like the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5. So far, so good — last year’s phones run Galaxy AI just as good as the newer S24 series. However, this raises another question entirely: why upgrade? Samsung said older phones with long update commitments will receive a similar update in due course.
That time has come as One UI 6.1 is rolling out to 2021 and 2022 flagships, which includes the Samsung Galaxy S21, in South Korea and will soon head to the rest of the world. However, according to the changelogs, some older phones only get a subset of Galaxy AI features, leaving many customers with a mixed view of Samsung’s AI experience. The Galaxy S21 series, for example, only looks set to get Circle to Search (essentially a revamped and rebranded Google Lens), while the Z Fold 3 is set to get AI-generated wallpapers and AI image editing. Talk about a mixed bag.
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
My gut tells me that the Exynos curse strikes again, as this seems to be a defining difference between the S21 and the Z Fold 3 in terms of AI-compatible hardware. And yes, there are Snapdragon variants within the Galaxy S21 series, but Samsung has always been reluctant to split features between chipset lines, preferring instead to hold back features to maintain a level playing field for its customers.
That said, different features within the same update for products of the same generation are certainly not ideal, which undoubtedly leads to user confusion (and possibly complaints) as to why their phone can do some new things. but not others. To Samsung’s credit, however, delivering every new feature to every device forever is impossible. After all, hardware moves on, and the rapidly changing pace of AI, especially features that run on the device, is rapidly increasing the hardware requirements to run the latest and greatest tools.
Still, much like Google and its Pixel 8 AI debacle, which left the seemingly capable but more affordable model without many of its Pro siblings, the situation is even more difficult to understand for the Galaxy AI features at work in the cloud. Note Assist, Live Translate and Chat Assist require a web connection, according to Samsung, while Web Translation in Samsung’s browser also has a cloud mode. However, they are not included in the update title for older Galaxy S21 series phones. Maybe they still require an element of on-device processing that older phones aren’t capable of, or maybe Samsung has cloud computing costs in mind for millions more users. Either way, it’s not entirely clear why some features have returned to older models but not others. Also, I’m left scratching my head as to why some of these can’t be app updates rather than appearing in a new version of One UI, especially if the processing is cloud-based.
AI seems to have made it difficult to meet all expectations for long-term update support.
Going back to our Pixel comparison, Google has struggled to bring many of its latest and greatest AI features back into older phones as well, despite the touted AI chops of its Tensor processor in the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series. Apparently there’s a limit to what Samsung can do with older hardware. All of this goes to show that long-term update policies offer no guarantee that you’ll get every new feature that comes with the latest phones. Something to keep in mind when buying these phones that promise seven years of updates. Will you be longing for new features long before then?
The AI arms race has clearly thrown a wrench in the works when it comes to backporting any cutting-edge feature, and there’s no getting around the fact that experts will grumble and users may be confused by the fact that the latest One UI doesn’t pretty much have all the latest features. However, we’re happy to see major OS upgrades making their way back to older Samsung Galaxy flagships in a timely fashion, and the brand still deserves a pat on the back for showing how Android updates should be done.
