AI is already messing up the era of long-term smartphone updates

Opinion post by

Robert Triggs

When Samsung announced Galaxy AI alongside the Galaxy S24 series, one of the first questions on everyone’s lips was: will older phones receive these awesome features? After all, Samsung has one of the industry’s leading update policies, with modern handsets receiving five to seven years of major updates, raising expectations for prompt, long-term feature support.

After just a couple of months, Samsung rolled out its One UI 6.1 update, complete with Galaxy AI, to the Galaxy S23 series and the Tab S9 family, as well as foldables like the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5. So far, so good — last year’s handsets run Galaxy AI just as well as the newer S24 series. However, it does beg a whole other question: why upgrade? Samsung stated that older handsets with long update commitments would receive a similar update in due time.