Samsung has gone hard promoting AI in their phones, and now OnePlus has also announced some heavy AI-based features in their new Android OS. Pretty much every other brand is now doing the same, so you can’t escape it.
I’ve been in the market to upgrade my nearly 6-year-old phone, but seeing all these AI features, especially when they rely on Google’s Gemini (or other cloud AI), and it feels deflating.
Will privacy ultimately have to be sacrificed “from now on”?
By not using these AI features, you pay a lot for features you won’t be using. And the usefulness of the device becomes limited as nearly all functions now have AI-based components to them.
I’m totally fine with on-device AI, but many features I’m seeing don’t seem to be on-device, and I’ve spent years trying to stop sending my data to companies like Google. I don’t want to go backwards for the sake of market trends.
What are your future plans when it comes to smartphones?
Same as my current plans: I pick a smartphone that runs a privacy-friendly OS, and only use privacy-friendly apps.
Right now, that’s a de-googled Android phone running LineageOS, with F-Droid as the only app store. In future, it might be something else, like a non-Android Linux phone. My current model is 6+ years old, still gets OS updates, and still works great, so I imagine the open-source options will have improved by the time I need to replace it.
I care about things like data exfiltration, battery life, cost, and hardware longevity (important for minimising e-waste). I don’t care about AI unless it happens to impact one of those things, but since there’s nothing inherent to AI that does, the issue of whether a phone has AI capabilities is irrelevant.
Only if you’re an early adopter. Like all new tech, further research and production volume will make it relatively cheap.