Why should Android makers focus on the phone and leave artificial intelligence to Google

If you have bought Android phone Last year, you may have noticed that it is full of artificial intelligence features. Maybe you got to know them before you got to buy, you may assume (safely as it turned out) that there will be a kind of artificial intelligence on your new phone, or maybe they took you by surprise.

If you bought a Samsung Galaxy S25For example, you will have twinand Search circleand Bixby and Galaxy Ai In your fingertips – all before you think about downloading the ChatGPT app. It reminds me of the first days of Android, when the phone makers tried to download the devices with their applications, services and their UIS calls in the name of differentiation. What raises the question: Is the new artificial intelligence Android Bloatware?

It is easy to understand the reason for the closing of Android phone makers to the idea that artificial intelligence may be a useful tool to distinguish them from competitors. After all, most of the leading Android phones in the same DNA subscribe: an advanced processor (usually the Qualcomm Upper Snapdragon slide), the latest Android program, a competitive camera system, and a battery that lasts for a day or more. The truth is that we often divide the hair when trying to recommend each other.

When AI Touly reached the scene, providing the ability to bring new experiences to mobile devices, Android phone makers were keen to take advantage of these possibilities. Here was a new opportunity to distinguish between themselves, and gave people a new reason for their choice to a competitor. (And bypass iphoneAs the apple is slow, apple intelligence in existence.)

In fact, he does not play this way – and for several different reasons. Firstly, Research conducted by CNET With the support of independent industry analysts, it constantly shows us that people do not upgrade their phones because of the availability of artificial intelligence features. Instead, the things they care about, as important are the price and the battery life is longer, storage and cameras. In other words, the same fine things that gave her priority for years when choosing a new phone.

The second issue is that despite the best efforts of some manufacturers, artificial intelligence is not the discrimination that they thought would be. At the heart of this problem, there is hardly the Android phone that strikes the market now does not already has the most integrated technology in Google Gemini. Each Android phone maker has its own flavor of artificial intelligence, but more often, this means a set of marching features on the current program in a random manner, which creates something from the influence of Frankstein.

Early engine feature: Galaxy AI

Among all Android phone makers trying to make their brand of artificial intelligence in our minds, may be Samsung at the best chance. Compared to competitors, it was relatively early jumping to Amnesty International, where Galaxy AI was launched in January 2024, giving it a strategic education that has been built since then.

Last week, she followed the launch of her latest fold with Amnesty International, during which he revealed that 70 % of Galaxy S25 owners used Galaxy Ai features. He added that more than half were using the circle to search. This year, Galaxy AI will bring more than 400 million devices.

All this seems positive, so you remember that this circuit for research is the Google feature, not the Samsung feature. Google, which makes Android OS, often clarifying temporary exclusives to Android phone makers on new Gemini features, as I initially did with Circle to search for Samsung in 2024. He did this again this year with a picture generator, which first appeared.

It is definitely a nice local for Google’s relationships with phone makers to be able to present these exclusives. But most of the independent artificial intelligence tools that we have seen eating the main headlines are GEMINI features ultimately from Google, not the work of individual phone makers, which is a matter of time only before they are available on other Android devices-including Google’s private pixels.

“Nothing is more important than Gemini,” said Ben Wood, the chief analyst of CCS Insight. It is a “strategic column for the future of Google”. He adds, to what better extent, to ensure its success instead of placing it in the hands of people across 3 billion Android phones in the market (which places Samsung 400 million in its right perspective)?

Samsung may have the largest stake in the market in any Android phone maker, but when you look accessible compared to Google’s, it is clear that Galaxy Ai, which is located above Gemini, is in a competitive position.

Your reward

Of course, Samsung and other Android phone makers will say for their special artificial intelligence flavors do not compete with Gemini, but they complete it. There is some authority in this idea.

It is rare for the phone maker to try to repeat something that Google has already done. Instead, they are looking for opportunities to add the development of their artificial intelligence – often in the form of camera features. But whether they do it well enough that it has any kind of effect on people’s decisions to buy their phones is another complete question.

This week, OnePlus began to launch its own suite of artificial intelligence features, which were announced again in May, to OnePlus 13 and 13R. These include some photo tools and Artificial intelligence content center is called in addition to the mind To serve as your memory for important information.

Arthur Lam said in an interview at the launch of the program, that it would be a waste of time that OnePlus will repeat the features at home that was already developed by Google. He said a major part of the company’s AI’s strategy is “embracing and merging Google AI) as quickly as possible.”

“At the same time, we must have our own suggestion, and our own idea about what OnePlus AI should represent,” Lam added.

This is where Plus Mind comes. It is an interesting first step from the company, although it may not be just convincing like a company like Motorola Investing in LAM (big business model) Unlike LLM, or the Great Language Model- it will respond to questions with procedures, not just words. The idea is that it will use its understanding of your environment and reduce the number of reactions you need with your phone to order coffee or Uber, for example.

All roads lead to Gemini

For Google, the company believes it is “great” that phone makers are developing their artificial intelligence to complete the set of tools they provide them. This is what Samir Samat, President of Android, said, Technology radar this week.

“If the features are great, it is more value for consumers and more innovation,” he said. “But for us, as Google, we want to make sure that these two pieces (Circle to Search and Gemini” can be very clearly accessible, and can be very clearly recognized through all the different devices that consumers think. “

It is a statement revealed from Samat, and supports the theory that Google’s ambition is to be the final head of the smartphone experience. Wood also puts it: “All roads lead to Gemini.”

Ultimately, access to Google, which will allow Gemini to be the dominant artificial intelligence tool on Android phones, but the budget and talent that the company must devote to AI, which individual phone makers cannot match.

This means that when it comes to differentiation, artificial intelligence is unlikely to be the factor that distinguishes brands like Samsung and OnePlus. Wood said: “Vegetables manufacturers are at risk of leaving them to compete for the brand and industrial design more than the features and capabilities of artificial intelligence,” Wood said.

True differentiation: a story nothing

One of the companies that seems to have realized that this is nothing based in the United Kingdom. Over the past year or so, I attended, either personally or almost, every launch of a major phone in Android. One thing that most of them share is a Google actor on the stage that adopts many benefits of Gemini.

When the Nothing Phone 3 was launched in London earlier this month, the company collected this trend. There is nothing still has a small share in the market – about 0.2 % as estimated by the founder and CEO KarlP. But since its inception in 2022, it has managed to prosper and grow in a mature competitive phone market, which is largely due to its focus on the design.

This does not mean that artificial intelligence has been ignored, but it has taken a different approach. Earlier this year, “Special Space”, an acting gateway to store and organize everything important on your phone, launched from the screenshots to the calendar calls. It was a unique feature that was already copied by some other phone makers (see OnePlus’s efforts above).

Nothing does not use Gemini, but it does not depend on it in the same way that its competitors are present. “We don’t want to do the typical side,” explained to me about this Phone 3 Launch earlier this month. “There are really good companies in it. They are very well financed and all compete against each other.”

Instead, nothing made the platform of artificial intelligence to be a “inappropriate model”. “When the models improve, we only move to the best. At the moment, I think it is backed by Gemini, but there is no prevention from change to the most recent and largest.”

An arduous battle forward

It seems that a flexible approach to artificial intelligence is the safest betting at this time when technology changes accurately minute. It will be an arduous battle to keep up with Android phones, and it hopes that their efforts will remain relevant and prove that it is useful as Google advances to provide experiences of the best AI’s types in their class.

The real battle here is the same battle that we have seen playing during the past decade and half: it is Apple against Google. The real distinction that we see in AI Mobile AI is now between Google Gemini and Apple Intelligence, where the former led the field and the last in his aftermath.

Google has always tries to build strongly on the progress of artificial intelligence early while retaining the Android system at the palm of her hand, phone makers will need to do more than just rely on artificial intelligence to convince us that their Android is truly best.