New survey suggests the vast majority of iPhone and Samsung Galaxy users find AI useless – and I’m not surprised
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Am I crazy? I’ve got this thing writing code and listing website listings. I ask it certain things before Google and just have it give me the source. I use it to sum up huge documents to quickly analyze them before I go through them. Feels like how Google felt I when it first came out. Yall using the same ai?
(Apple ai is not what I’m talking about)
I've asked bing gpt to find me 4k laptops and it proceeded to list 5 laptops that weren't 4k. Asked for the heaviest Pokemon and it responded wailord which has never been correct. Had gpt (not bing) attempt to write an AHK script for me to have forwards and backwards media keys, it failed. I asked it to fix it, it said what was broken, why it didn't work and then fixed it by giving me the exact code that didnt work the first time.
It's consistently wrong to me so i now just skip it because if I haven't to double check everything it says anyway, I might as well just do the research myself.
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Ironically, on my Xperia 1 VI (which I specifically chose as my daily driver because of all the compromises on flagship phones from other brands) I had the only experience where I actually felt like a smartphone feature based on machine learning helped my experience, even though the Sony phones had practically no marketing with the AI buzzwords at all.
Sony actually trained a machine learning model for automatically identifying face and eye location for human and animal subjects in the built-in camera app, in order to be able to keep the face of your subject in focus at all time regardless how they move around. Allegedly it's a very clever solution trained for identifying skeletal position to in turn identify head and eye positions, it works particularly well for when your subject moves around quickly which is where this is especially helpful.
And it works so incredibly well, wayyyyy better than any face tracking I had on any other smartphone or professional camera, it made it so so much easier for me to take photos and videos of my super active kitten and pet mice lol
That's pretty neat, I think that's a great example of how machine learning being useful for everyday activities. Face detection on cameras has been a big issue ever since the birth of digital photography. I'm using a Japanese 5 III that I picked up for $130 and its been great. I've heard of being able to side load camera apps from other Xperias onto the 5 III so I'll give it a try.
I think Sony makes great hardware and their phones have some classy designs and I'm also a fan of their DSLR'S. I've always admired there phones going back to the Ericson Walkmans, their designs have aged amazingly. I apreciate how close to stock Sony's Xperia phones are, I dont like UI's and bloatware you cant remove. My last Android phone a Galaxy S III was terrible in that regard and put me off from buying another Android until recently. I was actually thinking about getting a 1 VI as my next phone and install lineage on it now that I'm ready to commit.
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A survey of more than 2,000 smartphone users by second-hand smartphone marketplace SellCell found that 73% of iPhone users and a whopping 87% of Samsung Galaxy users felt that AI adds little to no value to their smartphone experience.
SellCell only surveyed users with an AI-enabled phone – thats an iPhone 15 Pro or newer or a Galaxy S22 or newer. The survey doesn’t give an exact sample size, but more than 1,000 iPhone users and more than 1,000 Galaxy users were involved.
Further findings show that most users of either platform would not pay for an AI subscription: 86.5% of iPhone users and 94.5% of Galaxy users would refuse to pay for continued access to AI features.
From the data listed so far, it seems that people just aren’t using AI. In the case of both iPhone and Galaxy users about two-fifths of those surveyed have tried AI features – 41.6% for iPhone and 46.9% for Galaxy.
So, that’s a majority of users not even bothering with AI in the first place and a general disinterest in AI features from the user base overall, despite both Apple and Samsung making such a big deal out of AI.
I think the article is missing the point on two levels.
First is the significance of this data, or rather lack of significance. The internet existed for 20-some years before the majority of people felt they had a use for it. AI is similarly in a finding-its-feet phase where we know it will change the world but haven't quite figured out the details. After a period of increased integration into our lives it will reach a tipping point where it gains wider usage, and we're already very close to that.
Also they are missing what I would consider the two main reasons people don't use it yet.
First, many people just don't know what to do with it (as was the case with the early internet). The knowledge/imagination/interface/tools aren't mature enough so it just seems like a lot of effort for minimal benefits. And if the people around you aren't using it, you probably don't feel the need.
Second reason is that the thought of it makes people uncomfortable or downright scared. Quite possibly with good reason. But even if it all works out well in the end, what we're looking at is something that will drive the pace of change beyond what human nature can easily deal with. That's already a problem in the modern world but we aint seen nothing yet. The future looks impossible to anticipate, and that's scary. Not engaging with AI is arguably just hiding your head in the sand, but maybe that beats contemplating an existential terror that you're powerless to stop.
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My kids school just did a survey and part of it included questions about teaching technology with a big focus on the use of AI. My response was "No" full stop. They need to learn how to do traditional research first so that they can spot check the error ridden results generated by AI. Damn it school, get off the bandwagon.
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I do not need it, and I hate how it's constantly forced upon me.
Current AI feels like the Metaverse. There's no demand for it or need for it, yet they're trying their damndest to shove it into anything and everything like it's a new miracle answer to every problem that doesn't exist yet.
And all I see it doing is making things worse. People use it to write essays in school; that just makes them dumber because they don't have to show they understand the topic they're writing. And considering AI doesn't exactly have a flawless record when it comes to accuracy, relying on it for anything is just not a good idea currently.
If they write essays with it and the teacher is not checking their actual knowledge, the teacher is at fault, not the AI. AI is literally just a tool, like a pen or a ruler in school. Except much much bigger and much much more useful.
It is extremely important to teach children, how to handle AI properly and responsibly or else they will be fucked in the future.
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I hate that nowadays AI == LLM/chatbot.
I love the AI classifiers that keep me safe from spam or that help me categorise pictures.
I love the AI based translators that allow me to write in virtually any language almost like a real speaker.What I hate is these super advanced stocastic parrots that manage to pass the Turing test and, so, people assume they think.
I am pretty sure that they asked specifically about LLM/chatbots the percentage of people not caring would be even higher
AI present on Apple and Samsung phones are indeed useless.
They have small language models that summarise notification and rewrite your messages and emails. Those are pretty useless.
Image editing AI that removes unwanted people from your photos have some use.
However top AI tools like deep research, Cursor which millions of developers are using to assist developers with coding are objectively very useful.
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That's pretty neat, I think that's a great example of how machine learning being useful for everyday activities. Face detection on cameras has been a big issue ever since the birth of digital photography. I'm using a Japanese 5 III that I picked up for $130 and its been great. I've heard of being able to side load camera apps from other Xperias onto the 5 III so I'll give it a try.
I think Sony makes great hardware and their phones have some classy designs and I'm also a fan of their DSLR'S. I've always admired there phones going back to the Ericson Walkmans, their designs have aged amazingly. I apreciate how close to stock Sony's Xperia phones are, I dont like UI's and bloatware you cant remove. My last Android phone a Galaxy S III was terrible in that regard and put me off from buying another Android until recently. I was actually thinking about getting a 1 VI as my next phone and install lineage on it now that I'm ready to commit.
I totally agree with the AOSP-like ROM and I love it so much too, especially since Sony also makes it super straightforward to root (took me less than 10 minutes) with no artificial function limitations after root (unlike the Samsung models where you can even root at all), so a highly AOSP-like ROM also means a lot of the cook OS customization tools originally developed for Pixel phones, where most of such community development efforts are focused on, tend to mostly work too on th Xperia phones
For side-loading Sony native apps from other models, I tried the old pro video recording app from previous gen (the Cinema Pro) on my Xperia 1 VI just for curiosity (since the new unified camera app with all the pro camera and pro video features included in a single app is definitely an usability improvement lol), and it worked fine, so it might work too if you side-load the new camera app onto your older model, feel free to DM me if you're interested to experiment with this and I can try the various methods for exporting that app and send to you.
Although Lineage OS is not yet available for the gen VI model since it only came out in 2024, however the previous gen V model got its first Lineage OS release in around September, 2024, so it might not take that long to get Lineage OS for the gen VI model
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A survey of more than 2,000 smartphone users by second-hand smartphone marketplace SellCell found that 73% of iPhone users and a whopping 87% of Samsung Galaxy users felt that AI adds little to no value to their smartphone experience.
SellCell only surveyed users with an AI-enabled phone – thats an iPhone 15 Pro or newer or a Galaxy S22 or newer. The survey doesn’t give an exact sample size, but more than 1,000 iPhone users and more than 1,000 Galaxy users were involved.
Further findings show that most users of either platform would not pay for an AI subscription: 86.5% of iPhone users and 94.5% of Galaxy users would refuse to pay for continued access to AI features.
From the data listed so far, it seems that people just aren’t using AI. In the case of both iPhone and Galaxy users about two-fifths of those surveyed have tried AI features – 41.6% for iPhone and 46.9% for Galaxy.
So, that’s a majority of users not even bothering with AI in the first place and a general disinterest in AI features from the user base overall, despite both Apple and Samsung making such a big deal out of AI.
Well, as a user of both, I agree.
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Google Lens already did that though, all you need is decent OCR and an image classification model (which is a precursor to the current "AI" hype, but actually useful).
That is still AI though...
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A survey of more than 2,000 smartphone users by second-hand smartphone marketplace SellCell found that 73% of iPhone users and a whopping 87% of Samsung Galaxy users felt that AI adds little to no value to their smartphone experience.
SellCell only surveyed users with an AI-enabled phone – thats an iPhone 15 Pro or newer or a Galaxy S22 or newer. The survey doesn’t give an exact sample size, but more than 1,000 iPhone users and more than 1,000 Galaxy users were involved.
Further findings show that most users of either platform would not pay for an AI subscription: 86.5% of iPhone users and 94.5% of Galaxy users would refuse to pay for continued access to AI features.
From the data listed so far, it seems that people just aren’t using AI. In the case of both iPhone and Galaxy users about two-fifths of those surveyed have tried AI features – 41.6% for iPhone and 46.9% for Galaxy.
So, that’s a majority of users not even bothering with AI in the first place and a general disinterest in AI features from the user base overall, despite both Apple and Samsung making such a big deal out of AI.
"AI" (as in LLMs for the sake of having LLMs accessible on your phone) is so fucking useless...
From a technical standpoint it's pretty cool, I love playing around with Ollama on my PC every now and then.
But the average Joe seems to think it's some magic being with absolute fucking knowledge you can talk to using your phone. Apart from being stupid, I think this might actually endanger human capabilities like critical thinking as well as reasoning and creativity.
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"AI" (as in LLMs for the sake of having LLMs accessible on your phone) is so fucking useless...
From a technical standpoint it's pretty cool, I love playing around with Ollama on my PC every now and then.
But the average Joe seems to think it's some magic being with absolute fucking knowledge you can talk to using your phone. Apart from being stupid, I think this might actually endanger human capabilities like critical thinking as well as reasoning and creativity.
I think the hate of AI does what you describe more than the actual AI
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I think the hate of AI does what you describe more than the actual AI
Yeah, no
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A survey of more than 2,000 smartphone users by second-hand smartphone marketplace SellCell found that 73% of iPhone users and a whopping 87% of Samsung Galaxy users felt that AI adds little to no value to their smartphone experience.
SellCell only surveyed users with an AI-enabled phone – thats an iPhone 15 Pro or newer or a Galaxy S22 or newer. The survey doesn’t give an exact sample size, but more than 1,000 iPhone users and more than 1,000 Galaxy users were involved.
Further findings show that most users of either platform would not pay for an AI subscription: 86.5% of iPhone users and 94.5% of Galaxy users would refuse to pay for continued access to AI features.
From the data listed so far, it seems that people just aren’t using AI. In the case of both iPhone and Galaxy users about two-fifths of those surveyed have tried AI features – 41.6% for iPhone and 46.9% for Galaxy.
So, that’s a majority of users not even bothering with AI in the first place and a general disinterest in AI features from the user base overall, despite both Apple and Samsung making such a big deal out of AI.
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"AI" (as in LLMs for the sake of having LLMs accessible on your phone) is so fucking useless...
From a technical standpoint it's pretty cool, I love playing around with Ollama on my PC every now and then.
But the average Joe seems to think it's some magic being with absolute fucking knowledge you can talk to using your phone. Apart from being stupid, I think this might actually endanger human capabilities like critical thinking as well as reasoning and creativity.
So many people use "Chat Jippity" to look up stuff. I know google is enshitificated.. but OH MY GOD.
After having mostly relevant Information available for everyone, the zone was flooded with Advertisement and FakeNews, and now the FakeNews are generated directly on the User's device.. no interaction and connection to anyone necessary.
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A survey of more than 2,000 smartphone users by second-hand smartphone marketplace SellCell found that 73% of iPhone users and a whopping 87% of Samsung Galaxy users felt that AI adds little to no value to their smartphone experience.
SellCell only surveyed users with an AI-enabled phone – thats an iPhone 15 Pro or newer or a Galaxy S22 or newer. The survey doesn’t give an exact sample size, but more than 1,000 iPhone users and more than 1,000 Galaxy users were involved.
Further findings show that most users of either platform would not pay for an AI subscription: 86.5% of iPhone users and 94.5% of Galaxy users would refuse to pay for continued access to AI features.
From the data listed so far, it seems that people just aren’t using AI. In the case of both iPhone and Galaxy users about two-fifths of those surveyed have tried AI features – 41.6% for iPhone and 46.9% for Galaxy.
So, that’s a majority of users not even bothering with AI in the first place and a general disinterest in AI features from the user base overall, despite both Apple and Samsung making such a big deal out of AI.
It's really pointless to most people, it has its use case. But it was just a hype train everyone got on like a few years ago many did with blockchain, another nice technology but only for certain use cases. I don't want nor need an always on AI to search through my phone and spy on me. I have already had overbearing exes try that. It's actually a big reason I am considering switching to a Pixel 10 as my next phone and just installing Graphene OS and calling it a day as my daily driver.
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AI is not there to be useful for you. It is there to be useful for them. It is a perfect tool for capturing every last little thought you could have and direct to you perfectly on what they can sell you.
It's basically one big way to sell you shit. I promise we will follow the same path as most tech. It'll be useful for some stuff and in this case it's being heavily forced upon us whether we like it or not. Then it's usefulness will be slowly diminished as it's used more heavily to capitalize on your data, thoughts, writings, code, and learn how to suck every last dollar from you whether you're at work or at home.
It's why DeepSeek spent so little and works better. They literally were just focusing on the tech.
All these billions are not just being spent on hardware or better optimized software. They are being spent on finding the best ways to profit from these AI systems. It's why they're being pushed into everything.
You won't have a choice on whether you want to use it or not. It'll soon by the only way to interact with most systems even if it doesn't make sense.
Mark my words. When Google stops standard search on their home page and it's a fucking AI chat bot by default. We are not far off from that.
It's not meant to be useful for you.
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A survey of more than 2,000 smartphone users by second-hand smartphone marketplace SellCell found that 73% of iPhone users and a whopping 87% of Samsung Galaxy users felt that AI adds little to no value to their smartphone experience.
SellCell only surveyed users with an AI-enabled phone – thats an iPhone 15 Pro or newer or a Galaxy S22 or newer. The survey doesn’t give an exact sample size, but more than 1,000 iPhone users and more than 1,000 Galaxy users were involved.
Further findings show that most users of either platform would not pay for an AI subscription: 86.5% of iPhone users and 94.5% of Galaxy users would refuse to pay for continued access to AI features.
From the data listed so far, it seems that people just aren’t using AI. In the case of both iPhone and Galaxy users about two-fifths of those surveyed have tried AI features – 41.6% for iPhone and 46.9% for Galaxy.
So, that’s a majority of users not even bothering with AI in the first place and a general disinterest in AI features from the user base overall, despite both Apple and Samsung making such a big deal out of AI.
This is what happens when companies prioritize hype over privacy and try to monetize every innovation. Why pay €1,500 for a phone only to have basic AI features? AI should solve real problems, not be a cash grab.
Imagine if AI actually worked for users:
- Show me all settings to block data sharing and maximize privacy.
- Explain how you optimized my battery last week and how much time it saved.
- Automatically silence spam calls without selling my data to third parties.
- Detect and block apps that secretly drain data or access my microphone.
- Automatically organize my photos by topic without uploading them to the cloud.
- Make everything i could do with TASKER with only just saying it in plain words.
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Am I crazy? I’ve got this thing writing code and listing website listings. I ask it certain things before Google and just have it give me the source. I use it to sum up huge documents to quickly analyze them before I go through them. Feels like how Google felt I when it first came out. Yall using the same ai?
(Apple ai is not what I’m talking about)
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The fact that I can't trust the AI message to be remotely factual makes that sort of use case pointless to me. If I grep and sift through docs, I'll have better comprehension of what I'm trying to figure out. With AI slop, I just end up having to hunt for what it messed up, without any context, wasting my time and patience.
I really recommend watching this introduction by Andrej Karpathy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI
One part that really stuck with me is that the data in the model is more like a fading memory but the stuff in the context window is more like the working memory. Since I learned that I tend to put as much information as possible into the context window before asking questions about it. This improved the results drastically and reduced hallucinations.
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Doesn't help that I don't know what this "AI" is supposed to be doing on my phone.
Touch up a few photos on my phone? Ok go ahead, ill turn it off when I want a pure photography experience (or use a DSLR).
Text prediction? Yeah why not.. I mean, is it the little things like that?
So it feels like either these companies dont know how to use "AI" or they dont know how to market it... or more likely they know one way to market it and the marketing department is driving the development. Im sure theres good uses but it seems like they dont want to put in the work and just give us useless ones.I recently got apple intelligence on my phone, and i had to google around to see what it really does. i couldn't quite figure it out to be honest. I think it is related to siri somehow (which i have turned off, because why would that be on?) and apparently it could tie into an apple watch (which i don't have), so i eventually concluded that it doesn't do anything as of right now. Might be wrong though.
