Circle To Search is now running on the Samsung Galaxy S21 series.
Janhui McGregor
Samsung promised new AI tools to owners of its budget phone last week and is now rolling out the update to millions of Galaxy users.
Circle to Search, which debuted on the Galaxy S24 in January and has been featured heavily in Samsung's Galaxy AI marketing, is now rolling out to several devices in Samsung's budget smartphone series. The full list includes the Galaxy A55, A54, A35, and A34. The Galaxy Tab S9 FE and Tab S9 FE+ will also receive the update.
SamMobile says the Galaxy Quantum 4 is also set to receive the update. Combined with the Galaxy S21, which received the AI tool earlier this year, the site estimates that 25 million phones will be included in the update.
Samsung previously announced that 100 million phones will come with Galaxy AI with the release of its One UI 6.1 OS, so it's clear that the company is keen to get its mobile AI tools into the hands of as many people as possible, which explains why the Korean company is focusing on distributing Circle to Search and not its other AI tools.
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Firstly, Circle to Search is an improved version of Google Lens that doesn't require powerful hardware like other Galaxy AI skills and works on virtually all Android smartphones.
Google and Samsung have expanded the feature's capabilities beyond just drawing a circle around an image to launch a Google search: It can also translate text, scan QR codes, and even has a homework-assistance component that creates a step-by-step guide to solving a math problem (without actually having to solve it).
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Google is further expanding the capabilities of Circle to Search with a new voice recognition feature that will apparently be gradually rolled out to some Android users.
One Reddit user discovered that when launching Circle to Search, a new symbol for identifying music tracks appears next to the translation option. Pixel phones already have a similar feature called Now Playing, which displays track IDs on the device's lock screen when you pick up music. But the new Circle to Search feature allows users to actively tell their smartphone to listen to a specific song, potentially replacing third-party apps like Shazam.
We suspect Google will want to add more AI-powered features to Circle to Search to bring Gemini technology to a wider audience. What will be interesting to see is whether Samsung and Google decide to roll out other less performance-intensive features, such as live translation or chat assist, to older phones in future updates.
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