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iPhone vs Galaxy vs Pixel: Which phone is the winner of the Tom's Guide AI Phone Face-Off?

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This is the phone with the best AI features according to TG's testing

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TG AI Phone Face-Off

This article is part of our AI Phone Face-Off. If you're interested in our other comparisons, check out the links below.

Our AI Phone Face Off is now complete, and it's time to declare a winner. But if you're only just joining us, let's set the scene.

New smartphones are focused on AI features, but it can be hard to compare these abilities when they're inconsistently named and accessed — let alone produce varied results. So we gathered together representatives of the top three smartphone brands: the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, the iPhone 16 Pro (or iPhone 15 Pro for some tests) and the Google Pixel 9 series, and compared them on like-for-like tasks to see which smartphone is the smartest.

And after our hexathlon of AI face-offs, we have some interesting results to share. Feel free to check out those articles to see an in-depth account of the tests and our results, but right here is where we will summarize all our findings and crown a champion.

Writing tools

While there was fierce competition, the overall champion for AI writing assistance was Gemini. Galaxy AI did better with note formatting, and wasn't far behind in most areas, but Gemini's suggestions were generally better, except when it was trying to be less formal.

Apple was way behind, other than with tone alteration. However, the Describe Your Change tool allows for greater versatility than picking a preset tone, as you have to do on the other two phones.

Winner: Google

Read the full AI writing tools face-off here

Photo editing

Samsung could easily have taken this comparison with the strength of its eraser and repositioning tools alone. But Google's overall quality gave it the victory in this round.

Apple Intelligence really struggled in this one, lacking several tools that the other phones offered. iPhone users are definitely short-changed for photo editing at the moment compared to their Android counterparts.

Winner: Google

Read the full AI photo editing face-off here

Digital Assistant

With Apple again languishing in third, the gold medal winner was eventually decided as Galaxy AI. It gets all of Gemini's assistant powers, including the handy cross-app actions, plus the option to implement some Samsung-made apps for greater user freedom.

We got a big shock when Apple managed to win one category and draw for another. While Siri needs help from ChatGPT for some functions or straight-up can't do some things that Gemini and Galaxy AI can, but its ability to understand commands was the best of all the competitors.

Winner: Samsung

Read the full AI assistant face-off here

Image generation

Apple didn't get a single point on the board in our AI image testing. Its limited Image Playground options make it hard to get the image you're asking for. That again left us with Gemini and Galaxy AI fighting for the top spot.

Between its Drawing Assist mode and standard AI image generation, Galaxy AI proved to be our winner. Google's Pixel Studio did well also, but started to falter when the prompts got more complicated.

Winner: Samsung

Read the full AI image generation face-off here

Transcription and summarization

Transcribing audio didn't split our competitors apart that much. But with summarization in the mix, Google pulled ahead.

That said, some may prefer the snappier summaries produced by Galaxy AI, or its smarter speaker recognition. And Apple managed to win one round by neatly transcribing and summing-up a speech reading.

Winner: Google

Read the full AI transcription face-off here

Translation

Text translation was handled simply enough by all three phones. Camera translation showed a big weakness of Galaxy AI, but didn't give a clear winner by itself.

In the end, voice translation testing confirmed that the Pixel and Gemini was the overall best option when wanting to understand foreign languages in various ways.

Winner: Google

Read the full AI translation face-off here

The verdict

If you've been counting winners as you've scrolled, then you'll now know that Google has come out on top of our AI Phone Face-off. Samsung comes a close second, and Apple an uneven third.

Apple Intelligence is unfortunately still underdeveloped compared to what Samsung and Google offer, and while more features and a revamped Siri are still in theory on the way, we have to take the features as they stand. Hopefully if we run a similar face-off in a year's time, the iPhone will be able to put up more of a fight.

Samsung achieves its silver medal position in no small part thanks to Google Gemini's versatility, but that's not to say Galaxy AI does nothing but ride Gemini's coattails. Samsung's own image generation, image editing and text-processing tools all work well, and are better built-in in places too.

But perhaps unsurprisingly from the maker of Gemini, Google takes the crown in our AI Phone Face-off. This is undermined slightly by the fact that Gemini is available on many different platforms, but the integration with the Pixel 9 series is top quality. If AI is your A1 priority, then you should check out a Pixel first next time you are looking to upgrade your phone.

More from Tom's Guide

Richard Priday
Richard Priday
Assistant Phones Editor

Richard is based in London, covering news, reviews and how-tos for phones, tablets, gaming, and whatever else people need advice on. Following on from his MA in Magazine Journalism at the University of Sheffield, he's also written for WIRED U.K., The Register and Creative Bloq. When not at work, he's likely thinking about how to brew the perfect cup of specialty coffee.

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