Don't have any AI apps? These are the 5 you need to install right now

Tom's Guide

5 hours ago

AI is rapidly becoming an indispensable part of our lives, not just at work but also in our everyday activities. For example, a growing number of people are replacing their daily Google searches with a chatbot session instead.
It's not hard to see why, AI can deliver a much more sophisticated and valuable search result than a plain search query. And that's including the dangers of hallucination.
But there's now a new option, which is the smartphone in your pocket. Until fairly recently AI services were focused on the computer experience rather than the mobile experience. But that's all changing with the arrival of more capable AI models which can handle not just text, but also vision and audio.
Apple phones seem to be lagging behind, but for lucky Android users, things are looking much brighter. Here's a roundup of four of the best AI chatbots you should consider installing on your phone. Remember you can install all of them if you want.
Considered by many to be one of the two best AI services in the world, ChatGPT has gone from strength to strength since its launch three years ago. The Android app has recently been updated and now offers sensational image generation on the fly. But where the product really excels is in the interactive audio mode.
Chatting with the AI is increasingly becoming indistinguishable from conversing with a friend. Even the free plan offers this kind of interaction. Anyone who relishes the idea of being able to create awesome imagery on their phone with stunning quality and accuracy should run, not walk, to install this on their Android phone.
If you're a Google or Android user, you'll already be well acquainted with the Gemini AI. You may not see it directly, but Gemini now processes an enormous amount of Google information in the background of their apps. And unlike the other products in this list, Google is already deeply integrated to a large degree in many people's lives, especially with email, search and phones.
Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.
So the addition of extra AI may seem one step too many for the privacy conscious folk among us. But for those who take the plunge, the new Gemini is extremely capable. The image generation may not be as good as ChatGPT, but it's close. And in all other respects the product is superb. It also comes with a hidden super power, as the user can set how much memory the bot can use to retain past information and chats.
Anthropic has gone from strength to strength, especially on its mobile app. The AI chatbot saw a major upgrade with the introduction of the Claude 4 models.
These newer versions outperformed a lot of the competition, especially when it comes to their coding ability.
It also offered voice features to all users, even those on free plans, to add even more functionality.
Controversial or not, DeepSeek is the one to watch - a hidden jewel in the AI universe which continues to surprise. The key thing about this Chinese super AI is the price. Free, and ever so cheap you won't believe it, are great marketing slogans. But on top of that it's actually a really good AI chatbot. It may not sport all the bells and whistles of the American products, but what it does do, it does extremely well. Web search, deep reasoning and insightful responses make it a winner in my book.
It also has the advantage of offering an open source version which you can run privately on your computer. This is great if you want to do sensitive personal AI stuff like financial budgeting or personal health management. The actual chat interface is rather generic, but you can't have everything.
Pocket pal is the only product on this list which is not based on the cloud. It's a downloadable Android app from the Play store, which lets you access any open source AI model that your phone will run. Now admittedly that's a stingily small number at the moment, but the situation is improving every year.
The recent release of the new small Qwen3 models proves that it is possible to run good quality AI chatbots privately on your phone without suffering degraded performance.
Quick tip: if you have an ancient Android phone like I do, your best bet is to run one of the really small models like the Qwen3 0.6B. This will deliver good performance and decent responses, and take up very little space in your phone's internal memory. Another good option is the LLama 3.2 3B which delivers similar performance. You can download them both from inside the PocketPal app.
Smartphone AI chatbots are improving by the day. Look out for more developments as the major Android smartphone manufacturers start to devote budget to improving the utility of their handsets.