These Are the Most Popular AI Features on Apple and Samsung Smartphones That You Probably Aren't Using Yet The new iOS 18.2 update added more AI upgrades. Here's what people are loving—and ignoring.
By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- Tech trade-in site SellCell conducted a survey of over 2,000 Apple and Samsung phone users.
- The survey found that the majority of Apple and Samsung phone owners have not used new AI features at all.
- Among those that have, a few features stood out as the most popular.
Apple released its second AI update, iOS 18.2, last week, but most iPhone users have yet to tap into the AI writing tools, photo editing capabilities, and other new Apple Intelligence features released two months ago with iOS 18.1.
That's according to a new survey of over 1,000 Apple iPhone users and 1,000 Samsung Galaxy phone users conducted by tech trade-in site SellCell from November 28 to December 6. The U.S.-based survey was conducted before the December 11 rollout of Apple's iOS 18.2 update, which added more AI features to the mix, including Siri consulting ChatGPT for answers.
The survey found that the majority of iPhone owners (58.4%) using an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16 model have not used Apple Intelligence. A similar percentage of Samsung smartphone owners, about 53.1%, have not utilized their phone's AI features at all.
Why are Apple and Samsung phone holders choosing not to use AI? Apple iPhone users said the main reason was that they didn't update to the latest software (57.6%). The top reason that Samsung Galaxy users gave was that they didn't find the AI features useful (44.2%). Inaccuracy was a concern for 18.2% of Apple users and 35.5% of Samsung users.
Related: Apple Is Adding ChatGPT to iPhones This Week. Here's How It Works.
Of the 41.6% of respondents who have used Apple Intelligence, the AI features most commonly used were writing tools, which proofread, summarize, and rewrite text across apps like Notes and Mail.
Other popular AI tools were notification summaries, which combine information from multiple notifications into a single view, and priority messages, which summarize messages and emphasize urgent emails.
On the Samsung side, the most popular AI feature used by over 80% of those who tapped into Samsung AI was Circle to Search, which enables users to draw a circle around any image on the screen to search Google for relevant information about that image.
Related: Apple Is No Longer the Top Phonemaker in the World as AI Pressure and Competition Intensifies
Galaxy AI features like live translate, which translates conversations in real time, and transcribe assist, which generates a transcription and a summary of recordings in the Voice Recorder app, were utilized by less than 4% of Samsung AI users.
Regardless of AI features, both Samsung and Apple users were mostly loyal to the brands of phones they chose. The majority of Apple users (78.9%) and the majority of Samsung users (67.2%) stated that they wouldn't switch brands for better AI tools.
Over four in five respondents overall also said they wouldn't pay to use AI.
Related: Apple Is Reportedly Creating New Foldable iPads and iPhones. Here Are the Details.
