Best AI phones 2026: which smartphone has the best AI features?

Artificial intelligence is here to stay. For most of us our smartphones will be the main way we interact with AI every day – but some brands have done a better job of adopting AI than others. If you’re after the best AI phone to buy in 2026, look no further.

I’ve tested the leading AI smartphones from Google, Apple, Samsung and more, to find out which offers the most useful AI features. All incorporate machine learning and large language models in some form or another, but there are clear winners when it comes to live translation, voice transcription, AI photo editing, writing assistance, and assistant functionality. 

These are the ones that do it best. I’ve also explained which AI features are the ones worth having, the difference between on-device and cloud processing, and how the big three AI platforms – Google Gemini, Samsung Galaxy AI and Apple Intelligence – compare.

Why you can trust Stuff: Our team of experts rigorously test each product and provide honest, unbiased reviews to help you make informed decisions. For more details, read how we test and rate products.

Quick list: What is the best AI smartphone?

The best AI smartphones on sale now:

1. Google Pixel 10

The days of Google’s smartphones being the “value” option are long gone. While the flagship Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL try to steal the spotlight, we think it’s the more mainstream Pixel 10 that deserves the crown for best overall AI smartphone.

Why we chose it

Although the Pixel 10 doesn’t have the Pro versions’ more capable camera hardware, quite as much RAM, or as sharp a screen, you’re still getting the full-fat Google phone experience – just at a more palatable price. The satin metal frame is arguably nicer in the hand (and definitely easier to keep clean) than the Pro’s polished steel, build quality is unshakeable and the looks are sharp enough to go toe-to-toe with Samsung and Apple.

Under the hood you get the same Tensor G5 processor as the Pixel 10 Pro; this not only delivers smooth performance across the board but also supercharges Google’s AI features, many of which now run fully on-device. Apps and games ran smoothly in our testing, while battery life is nothing to sniff at either.

The triple rear camera system is wonderfully capable considering the mid-range price point, with Google’s excellent algorithms able to eke out dramatic and detailed shots from all three lenses.

With Android 15 and seven years of promised OS and security updates, the Pixel 10 is also built to last.

Pixel 10 AI features

Gemini lives at the core of the Pixel experience. Gemini Live lets you have fluid, natural conversations with Google’s AI, complete with screen and camera sharing for real-time help. Magic Cue then brings proactive intelligence into chats, calls and searches, surfacing exactly the right info at the right moment.

Circle to search has now rolled out to most Android phones, but it started life on Pixel. Press and hold the gesture indicator (or onscreen home button if you have it enabled) and draw a circle around any onscreen text or image; your phone will then look it up on Google, using machine learning to recognise objects and locations with impressive speed and accuracy.

Naturally for a Google phone, the Pixel 10’s AI focuses heavily on photography. Magic Editor intelligently recognises objects when you tap them, letting you move them around the image – or remove them entirely, with the phone filling in the gaps. The results can be genuinely impressive.

Camera Coach then guides you step-by-step to better photos, Auto Best Take ensures group shots look flawless, and Video Boost sends your recorded video footage off to the Cloud for AI-based processing. It enhances colour and lighting to an impressive degree, but it’s Google’s servers doing all the heavy lifting here, rather than your phone.

2. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

Unique Privacy Display feature aside, there’s little here we haven’t seen before – but when the Galaxy S26 Ultra is so well-rounded and stuffed with features, it’s hard to deny this is the very best Android phone for the majority of people.

Why we chose it

On the surface, the S26 Ultra isn’t all that more advanced than the handset it replaces. However, Samsung has made sure to keep its expansive customer base happy with generational upgrades, more software smarts and even a world-first bit of screen tech. Privacy Display makes the screen all but unreadable from indirect angles, preventing shoulder snoopers from seeing your PINs, passwords or private information. No rival has anything like it straight from the factory.

Minor design changes have then made what is one of the biggest handsets around surprisingly comfortable to grip. Elsewhere performance is unsurprisingly blazing, courtesy of a Snapdragon 8 Elite For Galaxy Gen 5 processor custom-tuned for Samsung by chip maker Qualcomm, and battery is sufficient for a day of heavy use. The S Pen hasn’t gone anywhere either.

Photography also keeps pace with the Western competition, with a strong zoom game and pro-level video features. Just don’t mention the current crop of Ultra-badged camera phones.

Galaxy S26 Ultra AI features

Galaxy AI, Samsung’s suite of AI-enhanced software, debuted on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but felt a bit piecemeal; things are a lot more cohesive this year, with shortcuts and OS-wide tools instead of standalone apps. AI Select lives in a pop-out sidebar and lets you highlight text to activate Writing Assist, or images to generatively edit them.

Writing Assist is an evolution of the Chat assist tool baked into the S24 Ultra’s onscreen keyboard. It can create more professional-sounding copy for work, pepper sentences with hashtags for sharing on social media, or sprinkle in emojis for expressive texting. There are also options to summarise longer stretches of text, translate between languages, and check spelling and grammar on the fly.

You’ll also find a transcription summariser built into the voice recorder, which transcribes conversations on the fly (in multiple languages, to boot) and then creates a succinct synopsis in just a few taps. Real-time voice translation, for both phone calls and in person, also relies on AI to give speedy and accurate interpretation. It supports 13 languages at launch, with more expected to follow later.

Now Brief and the Now Bar are all new for 2025. The former is a contextual hub that summarises useful info from your apps. Think sports scores, weather reports, commute traffic and upcoming calendar appointments. The latter simplifies that even further on your lock screen, a bit like Live Activities on iOS.

There’s also Circle to Search; this Google-led tool isn’t exclusive to Samsung phones any more, but it works brilliantly with the S25 Ultra’s S Pen. Press and hold the home button (or gesture bar, if you’re using gesture controls) and draw a circle around anything onscreen. Machine learning recognises objects and locations in a flash, bringing up relevant Google searches – including where to buy the items in question.

Samsung has also added AI to its image editor and photo gallery. It can remove unwanted reflections from glass and shadows from faces with a tap, delete or reposition objects anywhere in the frame, and generationally expand any images you’ve cropped too tightly. The AI camera elements are largely done post-shutter press, rather than before, but object detection does rely on machine learning.

Finally, Instant Slow-mo can create extra frames and inject them into your recorded video footage, creating a convincing effect even if your clips were only shot at 30fps. Just preview your video in the Samsung Gallery app, press and hold on the moment you want slowed down, and it’ll play back brilliantly smoothly.

The best news for owners of older Galaxy phones? Samsung will likely bring most of these AI additions to the Galaxy Z Fold6, Flip6, Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S23 series, meaning you don’t need to upgrade to try them out.

3. Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max

The latest, greatest Pro iPhone looks quite different from the old one, with a giant device-spanning camera bar making room for an even more capable telephoto lens. New A19 Pro silicon is excessively quick in both apps and games, and battery life is better than ever.

Why we chose it

Going back to aluminium after a few years of titanium-hewn iPhones might feel like a backwards step, but the move allowed Apple to mix things up on the colour palette for the first time in what seems like forever. Cosmic Orange is the trend-setter the phone world was crying out for. The best iPhone is also easily one of the most eye-catching handsets around today.

That revised rear camera setup is good for wonderfully clean and colourful 4x optical snaps, along with 8x ‘lossless’ ones with a bit of algorithmic trickery. Apple continues to set the pace for creators, being one of the best options for mobile video, so while the hardware might not be best in class the resulting snaps can still hold their head up high.

The 17 Pro Max arrived running iOS 26, a radical visual rethink of Apple’s mobile operating system, with ‘Liquid Glass’ effects almost everywhere you look. Underneath the skin it’s Apple Intelligence that makes the biggest impact.

iPhone 17 Pro Max AI features

Apple Intelligence admittedly had some teething problems. It didn’t arrive alongside the iPhone 16, and saw a staggered rollout across various territories. Apple had to roll back certain features because they were inaccurate, like the notification summaries that showed false headlines attributed to the BBC and other news sources. But a year later, iOS 26 has expanded its feature set significantly.

Live translation is built into Messages, FaceTime, and the Phone app, working on the fly to eliminate language barriers; Image Playground now has baked-in ChatGPT support to generate images in custom styles based on text prompts, not just the ones installed by default from Apple; and Visual Intelligence is able to scan your screen now, inferring context to add things like appointments to your calendar.

This is all on top of the existing feature set. Writing Tools live in a contextual menu and lets you proofread or rewrite text selections or entire documents. It can summarise articles, reformat them into bullet points or tables, and directly call up ChatGPT through its Compose option. The Notes app can transcribe recordings, and summarise that transcription for quick reference later. The dialler app can do the same for calls (as long as you live somewhere it’s legal to record phone conversations).

The Photos app has a Clean Up option similar to Google’s Magic Eraser. It also lets you search for specific pics or clips using natural language, then create Memories animations from the prompts.

And Siri can phone a friend for more complex queries, by tapping into ChatGPT – with or without a free or paid OpenAI account.

4. Motorola Razr 70 Ultra / Razr Ultra (2026)

It’s sold as the Razr 70 Ultra in Europe and Razr Ultra (2026) in the USA, but Motorola’s flagship clamshell is comfortably the best flip-style AI phone on either side of the pond. It’s powerful, long-lasting and takes fine photos, while looking absolutely stunning in the process.

Why we chose it

From the Pantone-approved colours to the choice of Alcantara, natural wood and woven finishes, the latest Razr Ultra is an instant head-turner – and that’s before the front-filling 4in OLED outer display springs into life. Motorola isn’t nearly as restrictive with what apps you can run on it either, unlike Samsung. Underneath the 6.96in inner screen, while narrow, has a speedy 165Hz refresh rate and hits a retina-scorching 5000nits peak brightness with HDR content.

The CPU may not have changed from last year, but there should still be enough oomph to tackle apps and games. Battery capacity, meanwhile, has grown to 5000mAh – mighty for a flip-style foldable phone – and charging is a speedy 68W over USB-C. That comfortably puts Samsung’s Z Flip 7 in second place.

It’s great to see Motorola step up to a LOFIC main sensor on the outer cameras, giving the Razr greater dynamic range than its predecessor. With optical image stabilisation and a wide f/1.8 aperture, it could be the new class leader for clarity, although traditional handsets with dedicated zoom cameras have it beat for long-range ability.

Motorola’s take on Android has gotten steadily busier and more filled with apps, but it remains slick to use – and the new AI additions are very neatly integrated.

Motorola Razr 70 Ultra AI features

A big benefit of the Razr 70 Ultra is that you’re given multiple AI options from day one. Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Google Gemini are all preinstalled and live under the Moto AI banner. A dedicated AI key at the side of the phone reveals a context-sensitive menu with options to “take notes” (recording audio with accurate transcription) and “remember this” (which stores a screenshot in device memory so you can query it later).

‘Update me” summarises all your recent notifications, and Image Studio and Playlist studio use the cloud to generate images and music playlists respectively. The voice assistant can use the Perplexity AI model for its responses, but I fared better with Google Gemini.

You still get Google’s Circle to Search here, so don’t have to feel like you’re missing out on too much by picking the Moto over a Pixel.

5. Nothing Phone 4a Pro

Almost a ground-up reimagining of Nothing’s smartphone lineup, the Phone 4a Pro takes some of the firm’s most distinctive features and squeezes them into a metal shell, bucking the trend for glass sandwiches seen almost everywhere else. Competitive hardware, convincing cameras and a very tempting price make it hard to beat within its class.

Why we chose it

As well as being drop dead gorgeous, the Phone 4a Pro’s metal build feels gloriously high-end in the hand. The distinctive glyph matrix lighting at the rear might’ve lost a few LEDs since it last showed up on the Nothing Phone 3 but it’s just as fun and functional, while up front the firm’s monochrome NothingOS Android skin remains a joy to use. No rival has the design consistency and breadth of widgets.

A mid-tier Qualcomm chipset provides plenty of power, there’s enough battery to comfortably last all day, and the three rear cameras rub shoulders with the best of the affordable phone pack. A highly customisable camera app with hundreds of community-created filters to pick from certainly helps. There’s not much else out there that feels as well rounded for so little cash.

Nothing Phone 4a Pro AI features

The Phone 4a Pro has all of Android’s usual AI-driven features, including Circle to Search and Gemini Live – but the Essential Space is unique to Nothing hardware. It’s a hub for all your screenshots, voice notes and web links, opened with a double-press of the dedicated button. Press the Essential key once and it’ll take a screen grab; hold it down and it’ll record a voice memo.

AI then analyses each entry, pulling text from photos and making everything searchable. Voice recordings are transcribed automatically (with good accuracy, based on my testing).

There’s also Essential Search, which dials into your calendar, contacts book, image gallery and apps list. You can use it for web searches, and it’ll answer natural language questions too. It’s a decent replacement for Android’s usual Google search widget, and is improving with each new update to NothingOS.

Nothing is also rolling out a generative widget creator tool, which will let you create micro apps for your homescreen using natural language. Google is aiming to do something similar with iOS 17, but it was the plucky British firm that got there first.

Google Gemini vs Apple Intelligence vs Galaxy AI: which is best?

Google, Apple and Samsung are the three biggest names in smartphone AI right now, but there’s no clear winner. Instead, each firm’s offering is good in one unique way.

It’s Google that has the best AI assistant. Gemini can understand context, is tightly integrated with the brand’s other apps, and can recognise what’s on your screen or what your camera sees. You can use it to set reminders or send messages, often within the same conversation thanks to Gemini Live.

Samsung has the most varied toolkit, with AI drip-fed into many of its own-brand apps but without the integration you get from Google. Utilities to edit photos, translate text or polish written documents are where you’d expect to find them, while Now Nudge and the Now Bar do their best to surface meaningful suggestions. The two firms’ close working partnership means you do also get Google goodies like Circle to Search, though.

While Apple may not have the most effective AI today, needing to hand over from Siri to ChatGPT when it hits its limits, there’s no denying Apple Intelligence is very neatly integrated with iOS. Visual intelligence is also getting better at recognising context, letting you create calendar events from concert posters or identify unknown objects. For sheer ease of use, it’s the favourite.

Frequently Asked Questions

The AI features that actually matter

Phone makers want you to think their artificial intelligence features are indispensable, but it’s hard to work out which are actually worth your time when the AI label is thrown about so often. It also heavily depends how you use your phone.

Do you get a lot of nuisance callers? Then it makes sense to let an AI assistant screen your incoming calls, only answering if they’re a genuine caller. If you never pick up the phone to random numbers, it’s irrelevant. Live foreign language translation is a similar deal. Frequent flyers might find it useful when in unfamiliar countries, but you’ll never need it if you don’t travel. In general we’ve found very little reason to summarise web pages; AI often struggles with nuance and can skirt over important details.

Generative photo editing could be more useful if you’re not familiar with tools like Photoshop, while Circle to Search has been a lifesaver for identifying certain clothes or locations purely from images.

While we’ve yet to hit the turning point just yet, it’ll ultimately be the voice assistant that’ll matter most to AI. You’ll speak into your phone and it’ll do all the heavy lifting behind the scenes, saving you from bouncing between apps and doing everything by hand – though that still feels like years down the line from where we are today, at least for smartphones.

Recent updates

• June 16 2026: Google Pixel 10, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, Motorola Razr 70 Ultra, Nothing Phone 4a Pro added.
• December 30 2025: Updated headline.
• October 15 2025: Nothing Phone 3a added. Xiaomi 15 Ultra, Honor 400 Pro removed. FAQ section added.