Phone marketing now leads with AI. A buyer’s checklist should start somewhere else: the three AI tasks you performed last week, if any.
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Step one: name the tasks
Transcription, photo cleanup, translation, summarising documents, offline dictation. Write down which you used and where. If the answer is none, the AI premium is not for you yet.
Step two: check where they run
- On-device tasks need memory and a decent NPU.
- Cloud tasks need a good connection and a privacy decision.
- Mixed tasks need both, and are usually the ones vendors advertise.
Step three: weight the boring specs
Battery, screen, camera, update policy and repairability will matter for four years. The AI feature you saw in a demo will matter for one.
Step four: check the update promise
AI features ship with system updates. A phone with a short update commitment will lose the features that justified its price long before the hardware wears out.
Bottom line: choose for the hardware and the update policy, then treat AI as a bonus you verify in a shop.
