Most of us use our smartphones for the same things every day, like messaging, scrolling, clicking photos, and maybe watching a video before bed. But somewhere between the settings menu and the app drawer, our phones are quietly running some genuinely impressive artificial intelligence features.
They are in-built tools that can fix a bad photo, catch words you missed in a noisy meeting, or even answer a spam call for you. But not many people are aware that such options exist and may not even notice them.
They stay switched on in the background, or are hidden under Accessibility or Settings, doing their job quietly. This article walks you through some of them.
Here are seven AI features worth knowing about.
1. Adaptive Battery Management
If you have ever wondered why your phone lasts longer on some days than others despite similar usage, adaptive battery management is the reason. This feature uses on-device machine learning to identify which apps you open most often and which you barely touch.
Instead of treating every app in the same manner, it groups them into priority levels. Apps you use constantly, like your messaging or banking app, get to run freely in the background so notifications arrive on time. Apps you open once a month get restricted; their background activity is throttled so they don’t quietly drain your battery while sitting idle.
Google has said this system was developed with input from its DeepMind AI research team, and it keeps refining its predictions the longer you use your phone.
Where to find it (Android): On most Android phones, this can be found by navigating to Settings > Battery > Adaptive Battery (the exact path can vary slightly by brand).
If you notice certain notifications arriving late, you can manually exclude that particular app from battery optimisation in the same settings menu.
2. Live Subtitle Generation
This is one of the most genuinely helpful accessibility features on modern smartphones, and it works entirely without an internet connection. Known as Live Caption on Android, it listens to whatever audio is playing on your phone and generates real-time captions on screen.
It runs completely on-device. No audio is sent to any server for processing, which means it works in flight mode, on a train with no signal, or when your Wi-Fi is down. It is built using a combination of on-device deep learning models trained for speech recognition and punctuation.
On newer Android versions, Google has added ‘Expressive Captions,’ which try to reflect tone and emotion, for example – the commentator shouts during a match, the caption will show it in a way that reflects the excitement, and it can also flag sounds like laughter, applause, or a knock at the door.
This is especially useful for anyone who is deaf or hard of hearing, but honestly, it helps everyone.
Where to find it (Android): Settings > Accessibility > Live Caption. On many phones, you can also turn it on instantly from the volume slider that appears when you press the volume button.
3. Dynamic Screen Search
This feature changes how you look things up. Instead of taking a screenshot, opening a separate app, and cropping an image just to identify something, you can now circle, tap, or scribble on anything visible on your screen and get an instant search result.
Google introduced this as ‘Circle to Search’ in January 2024, and it is now available on a growing number of Android phones, including Pixel and Samsung Galaxy devices. It is built on top of Google Lens and multisearch technology, which means it does not just recognize objects, it can also identify text, translate on-screen content, and even flag whether an image looks AI-generated.
So if a friend shares a reel showing an unfamiliar plant, an outfit, or a phrase you don’t understand, you can circle it right there and get an answer without breaking your scroll.
Apple has its own version too, called Visual Intelligence, which works similarly by letting you point your camera or use on-screen content to search or get information.
4. Contextual Object Removal
Almost every good photo has one annoying flaw. Contextual object removal tools fix this directly inside your gallery app, no desktop software required.
Google’s version, Magic Eraser, first launched with the Pixel 6 series and has since expanded to more devices through Google Photos. You simply tap on the unwanted object or person, and the AI studies the surrounding texture, lighting, and colour to fill in the gap so it looks like it was never there.
Samsung offers a similar tool called Object Eraser in its Gallery app, and Apple added a comparable Clean Up feature to Photos with iOS 18.
Where to find it (Android): Open any photo in Google Photos, tap Edit, and look for the Magic Eraser tool.
5. Real-Time Voice Transcription
If you regularly sit through meetings, lectures, or interviews, this feature alone can save you hours of manual note-taking. Google’s Recorder app, exclusive to Pixel phones since the Pixel 4, transcribes speech to text in real time, entirely on-device.
It is more than a basic transcription tool; it includes speaker labelling. Using a Google-developed speaker diarization system, the app can tell different voices apart and label them as Speaker 1, Speaker 2, and so on, which you can rename afterwards.
On newer Pixel phones with Gemini Nano enabled, the Recorder app can also generate an automatic summary of a long recording, pulling out the key points so you don’t have to scroll through the entire transcript.
Other phone makers offer similar tools too; Samsung’s Voice Recorder app has transcription built in, and third-party apps extend this to iPhones.
Where to find it (Android): Open the Recorder app > start a recording > tap the transcript icon. The “Summarize” option appears once the recording is saved, on supported devices.
6. Smart Call Screening
Smart call screening tools act like an in-built receptionist, answering unfamiliar numbers on your behalf and showing you a live, text version of what the caller is saying so you can decide whether to pick up, let it go to voicemail, or block them, all without saying a word.
Google’s version, Call Screen, has been a Pixel feature since 2018 and uses on-device speech recognition to transcribe the caller’s response in real time. You can also set it to answer certain unknown calls automatically.
Apple introduced a comparable feature, Live Voicemail, that transcribes voicemail messages as they are being left, so you can decide to pick up mid-message if it turns out to be important.
Where to find it (Android): You can find it under Phone app > Settings > Call Screen.
7. Intelligent Document Scanning
Point your camera at a physical document, and your phone’s default camera or notes app can detect the page edges, straighten out any skew, remove shadows, and convert the whole thing into a clean, searchable file in just a few seconds.
Google Drive’s scan feature and Google Lens both do this well, automatically cropping and enhancing document photos, and running Optical Character Recognition (OCR) so the text inside becomes searchable and even copyable later. Apple’s Notes app has a nearly identical built-in document scanner, and Microsoft Office Lens offers similar functionality across both Android and iOS.
Where to find it (Android): Open Google Drive, tap the + button, and select Scan.
Also Read: AI Features on Mobile: How AI Transformed Smartphones
