The AI space race between Google and Samsung and between Android and iPhone has exposed long-standing issues that need to be addressed, issues buried within Android’s core.
Google continues to narrow the gap to iPhone, with Android 15 and the forthcoming Android 16 bringing security and privacy upgrades
And while Samsung owners have endured a frustrating wait for their upgrade, this is now imminent and it seems Android 16 will be handled differently.
But there’s one awkward black hole that remains, hidden tracking that’s impossible to stop.
This is bad news for all Android users, but especially for Galaxy and Pixel users buying handsets with “on-device privacy” built in.
The issue is the old versus the new. You will have noticed that AI announcements from both Google and Samsung stress on-device, privacy-preserving processing
Google’s latest scam detection “protects your privacy by processing everything on-device,” and even its controversial new photo scanning “is done on-device and all of the images or specific results and warnings are private to the user.
Samsung — which pushed hybrid AI before Google — goes further, “Galaxy’s approach to AI personalization