There has been lots of media coverage today about the new $900 Galaxy S24 phone, which apparently comes pretty close to bringing Star Trek’s Universal Translator to reality.

I first read about it in The Washington Post article, Samsung’s new Galaxy S24 translates live phone calls with AI.

The author of that article talks about being able to have an accurate conversation in Korean with a restaurant – the author speaks in English, and the other person hears what they are saying in Korean.

After reading the article, I wondered if it would only work with two of the Galaxy phones communicating with each other.

I researched it online, and it apparently will work with any other brand’s smartphone. This article from a month-and-a-half ago says it will start with only Spanish and add others later, but they’ve obviously already begun adding more. That article also mentions the conversation will also appear in writing on your phone’s screen.

Multilingual texting obviously is a common way for teachers and schools to communicate with parents, so apps like Parent Square (in preparing this blog post I discovered that Remind was bought by Parent Square), but being able to have an actual phone conversation can also be extremely helpful.

I wonder when this kind of ability will come to other cellphones, and if some schools might find it worth the money to buy one of these Galaxy ones sooner rather than later?

I’m adding this info to The Best Sites For Learning About Google Translate and Other Forms Of Machine Translation.