The highly anticipated "Galaxy Unpacked" event took place in San Jose this week, with Samsung promising to unveil the mystery of the "new era of smartphones," and indeed, it was an event full of "AI." Although the event revolved around Samsung, the real protagonist is another major tech company without which the AI capabilities relied upon by smartphone manufacturers would be impossible. Google takes the stage.

As Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S24 series of smartphones - the Galaxy S24, S24 Plus, and S24 Ultra - the focus of the company was on showcasing the new AI capabilities on these smartphones, known as Galaxy AI. However, the integration of Google's advanced AI features on the phones became the highlight.

Google's Journey

When Samsung teased the flash with the Samsung Galaxy AI logo, its striking resemblance to the Google Bard logo caught everyone's attention. The suspicion became evident when the company announced at the Galaxy AI event that the latest AI features from Google would be incorporated into the new smartphones. Almost all the new features announced in the S24 series are supported by Google.

Google and Samsung separately announced a new feature called "Circle Search." This new feature allows users to draw a circle around any object in an image or video and obtain AI-supported information provided by Google. Users can search for anything with a simple gesture without switching apps. Another feature is Live Translate, where an integrated AI model provides real-time voice/text translation in the native phone app.

While these added AI features sound impressive, the biggest announcement is the integration of Gemini on Samsung phones.

Gemini Resurfaces

Google's Gemini is considered its most capable and advanced multimodal AI model, which was released last month and will be integrated into the Galaxy S24 phones. The series will feature Gemini Nano, a model optimized for device-level tasks.

In addition, Samsung will be one of the first customers to deploy Gemini Pro, an AI model used by Google for various tasks, as well as Imagen 2, Google's advanced text-to-image diffusion technology used on Vertex AI. Samsung's applications such as Notes, Voice Recorder, and Keyboard will leverage Gemini Pro for summarization functionality.

Samsung will also be among the first to test Gemini Ultra, the most powerful and largest AI model used for highly complex tasks. Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, sees the Samsung-Google Cloud partnership as a "huge opportunity to leverage generative AI to create meaningful mobile experiences." With Gemini, Samsung smartphones can harness Google Cloud's infrastructure and advanced AI capabilities.

Samsung's Diversified Partnerships

Samsung's close collaboration with Google will help its devices utilize the latest AI features, but this does not limit smartphone manufacturers from establishing partnerships with other tech giants.

At the recently concluded 2024 CES, Samsung announced its strategic partnership with Microsoft to introduce the Copilot feature. Microsoft's Copilot capability is expected to arrive on Galaxy phones in March.

In addition, the company also stated that the Galaxy smartphone's camera can be used as a webcam for PCs. Webcam support will allow the use of both front and rear cameras and enable users to apply background blur and other customizations during video calls.

With the recent release of Copilot Pro, which offers numerous AI features, Samsung's collaboration with Microsoft on one hand and Google on the other allows the company to have the best of both worlds.

Android Upgrade

With Google's support for a range of AI features, another significant development in the operating system field begins as Samsung phones now receive 7 years of security updates and a 7th generation operating system upgrade starting from the S24 series.

This is a major upgrade compared to the previous Android upgrade announcement. In early 2022, Samsung announced that it would provide a 4th generation Android operating system upgrade and 5 years of security updates starting from the S21 series.

Interestingly, Google also announced seven years of software updates for its latest Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones released in October last year. Now Samsung has announced the same, and the competition in the Android smartphone market will continue between the two companies.

However, considering Samsung and Apple's large market share in the smartphone market, Google's Pixel share is almost negligible. Clearly, Google's AI models designed for smartphones are not solely for its customers. By tapping into the market of large Android smartphone manufacturers, Google's AI products will only bring victory to the company.

Considering that Google is providing exclusive rights to Gemini (except for Pixel) to the Samsung S24 series, the collaboration may also involve significant financial transactions. However, with a recent market share loss of 0.6% to Apple, Samsung will be eager to benefit from its collaboration with Google on the S24 series.