Samsung is apparently considering a future where the familiar Settings app on your phone is made completely redundant by AI.
Reporting by Korea's ETNews claims (via the country's National IT Industry Promotion Agency) that Samsung is looking into new AI applications that would mean the device could alter key options itself without user involvement. This would include major parts of a smartphone, like the cameras or on-screen keyboard, the report adds.
Samsung has been showing off the powers of its Galaxy AI package since it unveiled them on the Galaxy S24 series earlier this year. While these features allow for image and video editing, text summaries and live translation and transcription, there's currently nothing within Galaxy AI directly related to adjusting settings.
Galaxy phones, like all modern smartphones, already have more familiar kinds of AI and automated features. That includes things like screen brightness adapting to local light levels, battery charging pausing overnight to ensure your phone hits 100% just before you start using it, and access to digital assistants like Google Gemini or Bixby. So arguably all the basic components are in place for Samsung to start trying out this idea to see if it has a chance of working.
It's not only Samsung that has this notion, either. Apple's Siri, now enhanced with Apple Intelligence, will apparently be capable of showing you how to make changes to your settings or apps, or even do tasks on your behalf in a future update.
But with the first stable release of Apple Intelligence believed to launch only at the end of October, which doesn't include this feature, even iPhone users could be waiting a while for a Settings-less future.
Options shouldn't be optional
Letting your phone take more of a lead on adjusting basic settings could be a welcome change for users fed up of having to switch settings back and forth themselves. And even more so for less technically-minded users who just want their phones to "work," rather than tinkering with each and every sub-option themselves.
But as admirably bold a strategy as sidelining or even removing the Settings app is, Samsung would be foolish not to include a way to manually override things. Even the smartest AI won't always get it right.
Plus, as with all AI applications of this type there are privacy questions about how much data these predictions would need to be based on, and how it would be processed. On-device processing would be more secure but possibly limit the AI settings' usefulness, while doing in the cloud could mean sacrificing privacy and security in return for better performance.
Don't expect the Galaxy S25, assumed to launch around January 2025, to suddenly throw out the Settings menu. But we should perhaps keep an eye out for Samsung priming us during the S25's launch, and that of later devices, for AI-powered settings down the line. That would be alongside other rumored Galaxy S25 features like larger screens, slimmer bezels, and satellite connectivity.
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