Every "AI Phone" Is the Same Phone With a Button
The hardware industry discovered AI the way it discovers everything: by putting a word on the box.
Last year's phone had a camera. This year's phone has an AI camera. The camera is the same. A marketing person added a word.
I am not against on-device models. They are genuinely useful for things like live translation and not sending your photos to a server. But most "AI phone" launches are a chip that was already there, renamed.
The one real move was the dedicated assistant button. We removed buttons for a decade and are now selling them back as a feature. Circle of life, I guess.
If you are buying a phone this year, ignore the AI label. Ask what runs offline, what is private, and whether the thing you actually do every day got better. The answer is usually no.