One UI 6.1 first debuted on the Galaxy S24 series, unveiled in January 2024, and it rolled out in March 2024 to the Galaxy S23 series, the Tab S9 series, the Z Fold 5, and the Z Flip 5.
This new update brought the much-awaited Galaxy AI features to Samsung devices, including some as follows:
- Circle to Search
- Live Translate on phone calls
- Generative AI eraser and editing in the gallery
- Summarise and auto-formatting in Samsung Notes
- Generative AI wallpapers
- Transcriptions in the recording app
Users of older Samsung devices are eagerly waiting for the One UI 6.1 update, and now we have some good news and bad news for some of them.
Update April 12: According to the moderator of the Samsung Korean community forum, One UI 6.1 will start rolling out for Galaxy S22, Z Fold 4, Z Flip 4, Tab S8 series, Galaxy S21, Z Fold 3, and Z Flip 3 in early May 2024. Galaxy S22 and 2022 foldable users will get the same AI features found on the latest Galaxy S23 FE. The Galaxy S21, Fold 3, and Flip 3 won’t receive all the AI features, but they will get the Circle to Search and Magic Rewrite feature.
Original Story (Published on April 9):
We will start with the good news first. The Korean publication Naver has reported that Samsung is planning to roll out the One UI 6.1 update for the following devices in South Korea this month, with more regions to follow soon.
- Samsung Galaxy S22 series consists of the S22, S22+, and the S22 Ultra.
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4
- Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4
While this is a reason for the users of Samsung’s 2022 flagship lineup to rejoice, the same report comes with very disappointing news: Samsung will not give the Galaxy AI features to these devices, at least not for now.
The report cites “hardware limitations” as the reason why the older flagships will not get Galaxy AI features. Samsung faced specific difficulties driving the latest AI technologies, leading to subpar performance.
It is hinted that Samsung could have provided those devices with lesser AI features, but the company feared it might give a bad image to the Galaxy AI expansion strategy, so the plans were apparently scrapped.
Now, we have a certain different opinion on this issue. Take the Galaxy S23 FE, released last year with the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 1/Exynos 2200 combination as the Galaxy S22 series, which actually got the full Galaxy AI feature set.
Hence, it is ridiculous for Samsung to use the “hardware limitation” excuse for the 2022 flagships when it has already been perfectly demonstrated that it can run the new AI algorithms.
This is further aggravated by the fact that very few Galaxy AI features actually run on-device. Most of the features are online and run via servers, which do not require any serious NPU capabilities in the first place: they only need a stable internet connection to process the data on Google’s servers.
However, there might still be hope for users of older Samsung devices since it was previously reported that the company is actively working on merging cloud-based AI and on-device AI into one hybrid ecosystem. If successful, this can be a plausible solution to transfer some of the Galaxy AI features to the older devices. This is something only time will tell, though.
Additionally, Samsung has confirmed that Galaxy AI will be available on more devices soon. This suggests that older Galaxy devices may also get Galaxy AI support in the future. So Samsung might release One UI 6.1 initially without Galaxy AI for older devices. Later, they would release a separate software update, including Galaxy AI features.
Bringing Galaxy AI to as many older devices as possible will also make it easier for the company to achieve its 2024 goal of reaching 100 million Galaxy users.
