AI moves to the edge

Know when Google Translate works offline, allowing you to communicate in another language without the internet? Or when your iPhone recognises your face to unlock in milliseconds, even without connection? That’s edge AI – the ability of smartphones to run AI models locally, without needing to “ask” the cloud. It’s the democratisation of intelligence, bringing computational power to where data is generated.

Mobile companies are aggressively shifting AI processing from centralised cloud servers to on-device hardware (edge AI), bringing intelligent functionality directly to the user’s pocket. By 2026-end, it is projected that 90% of new mobile apps will incorporate AI capabilities, with a significant portion processing data locally on dedicated neural processing units (NPUs). Qualcomm and MediaTek are leaders in producing NPUs for edge AI, integrating them into their system-on-chips. Smartphones are just the beginning; edge AI is also being deployed in autonomous vehicles, smart factories, drones, surveillance systems and healthcare devices.

From cloud-based AI to on-device intelligence

To be sure, AI has existed on handsets for years, powering features such as voice assistants, camera optimisation and predictive typing. Earlier, most complex tasks depended on remote computing infrastructure. A phone would capture data such as a voice command, image or text query and send it to a server for processing before returning the result. Edge AI changes that flow. The phone itself can analyse information and generate responses in real time. This change is possible because of NPUs that can run machine learning models efficiently. Now, things like translation, speech recognition, photo editing, and helpful suggestions are often handled right on the phone.

MediaTek firmly believes that smartphones will play a central role in driving breakthroughs and advancements in AI technology. “AI inference is exploding, with global monthly token usage now exceeding 6,000 trillion tokens,” said JC Hsu, corporate senior VP & GM, Wireless Communications Business Unit, MediaTek. He explained that specialised NPUs are now becoming a core element of smartphone chip design. In MediaTek’s collaboration with Oppo on the Find X9 series, features such as AI Translate and AI Portrait Glow have demonstrated performance comparable to cloud-based solutions.

For users, this means more than just quicker responses. Running AI models on the phone can help with privacy and connection issues. Personal data like photos, messages, or voice recordings can be processed on the device instead of being sent over the internet. Many features can also keep working even if the internet connection is weak or unavailable.

AI is moving into the phone’s core software

The shift is also beginning to change how software interacts with users. Won-Joon Choi, COO of Mobile eXperience (MX) Business, Samsung Electronics, said, “When it comes to AI, we’ve been working with Google for a long time to create something called AI OS (operating system). We call it AI OS because we integrate some of the AI functionalities and engines at the OS layer so that we can provide new agentic experiences to apps and services. That is one of the biggest focus areas for our AI ( first seen in Galaxy S26 series).”

Choi believes that integrating AI more deeply into the operating system could alter the roles of many apps. “Some of the apps, like Netflix and Spotify, provide content, and users use these apps for entertainment purposes. I think such apps will remain around,” he said. “However, some other apps, like when you want to do certain tasks, if you look at it, for certain complicated tasks, you need to open an app and copy or get some information and copy that. Then you close that (app) and open another app, and then just do an execution.”

Choi feels that AI agents could eventually handle such tasks automatically. “Some of the reminder apps and task organisation apps – these apps may disappear because your agent can remember all the information that you already provided. This agent can explore your calendar, your files, your notes, and then it gets the right information on behalf of these apps,” he added.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.