Samsung has announced the Galaxy S24 Ultra, S24+ and S24, and put artificial intelligence at the centre of all three rather than at the edges. The claim that matters is that the phone does the work itself: calls can be translated in two directions within the dialler, with the processing kept on the device, and the keyboard can translate messages in thirteen languages, according to the company.

Two of the features carry the launch. Live translation is the kind that is either good enough to trust or not worth having, and Samsung says no third-party app is needed and the conversation stays private because the model runs locally. The other is Circle to Search, a gesture built with Google that lets a user draw round something on screen and search for it, which Samsung calls a first for a phone.

What actually changes for the person holding it

The hardware follows the same pitch. The Ultra adds a five-times optical zoom alongside a 50-megapixel sensor, and Samsung says its pixels are 60 per cent larger than the previous model's. It runs a version of Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon chip made for Galaxy, the screen reaches 2,600 nits, and the battery holds 5,000 milliamp-hours. Samsung is also promising seven generations of operating system upgrades and seven years of security updates, and says half the cobalt in the battery and all the rare earth elements in the speakers are recycled. TM Roh, who heads the mobile business, describes the launch as the start of a decade of mobile AI.

None of that is priced. The release names no figure and no date for most markets, and the camera, brightness and recycling numbers are the company's own. The question a buyer will actually answer is narrower than the marketing: on a noisy call, in a second language, does on-device translation work, and if it does, was it the announcement that changed the phone or the update that follows it?