Intro

15-second summary of this post: Your phone is now a pocket AI studio. Design a presentation, get voice coaching, conduct research, or make a quick infographic. The biggest players — ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude — all offer numerous free features on both iOS and Android. And a growing group of alternative AI apps now offer private AI for free. [See my recommendations for free, private AI on your laptop.]

Read on👇 for a guide to the most notable features of the top AI chat apps.

ChatGPT: Your Conversationalist 🗣️ iOS & Android

Advanced Voice Mode is the ChatGPT app’s most distinctive feature. Ask it to play a tough interviewer or a skeptical client as you prepare for a difficult conversation. Or have it ask questions to help you make a decision.

Most of what you can do on your laptop you can do in the ChatGPT mobile app.

* Create an image. Ask for an infographic, a cartoon, or a photo illustration. See examples of seven ways I use these images.

* Ask for deep research. Get a detailed analysis with dozens of sources. See examples of nine ways I use this research.

* Study & learn. This new mode helps you strengthen your skills & knowledge.

* Analyze files or images. Turn a handwritten note into digital text, or make sense of any document, diagram, or manual. When I can’t figure out how to assemble or operate something, this offers faster help than a Google search.

* Use integrated apps. You can now access Canva, Figma, Spotify, Expedia, and other tools inside ChatGPT. Try prompting for a graphic within ChatGPT while waiting in line with your phone, then edit it later in Canva.👇

Pulse is ChatGPT’s best new pro mobile feature. It creates customized notes for me every morning. The AI assistant synthesizes info from my chat history, my Google Calendar, and what I’ve expressed an interest in learning.

This morning’s Pulse note, for example, included tactics for using new Substack features, Penguin stories for sharing with my daughter, and breakfast ideas I had asked about for my rice cooker and bread machine.

These aren’t news updates — they’re personalized resources prepared by an AI assistant. I don’t use or recommend relying on AI assistants for news searches, especially given AI’s struggles with news accuracy. Caveat: Pulse isn’t yet available for free accounts.

Gemini: Your Creative Partner 🧑‍🎨 iOS & Android

The Gemini app has five special features, in addition to its core chat capability.

* “Nano Banana” image generation model. Edit photos, blend multiple images, or design a poster. Worth trying: ask it to turn any image from your phone into a record album, book cover, or billboard poster.

* Deep Research. Generate exhaustive reports with citations whenever you need thorough background on an issue. Try this prompt: “Create a step‑by‑step plan to adopt [tool/technology] in a team of [size]. Include costs, training time, change‑management risks, and how to measure success. Cite case studies.” See a few of my tips for strengthening deep research queries.

* Veo 3 video generation. Paid accounts only. Create 8-second clips with Veo 3.1, Google’s new video model. Experiment: create a slick moving background for a slide.

* Canvas. Make an infographic, a quiz, or a simple game. Quick test: make a self-grading quiz to challenge yourself on something you’re learning.

* Guided Learning. Put Gemini in teacher mode to help you gradually strengthen your understanding of anything. Try this: ask it to walk you through the history of any concept or tech you’re curious about.

When I choose Gemini: I use it as an alternative to ChatGPT and Claude when I want particular kinds of image edits and creative image designs. I also use it to experiment with generating short video clips, for guided learning, and for research reports.

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Claude: Your Mobile Studio 👷 iOS & Android

Claude’s app has a new voice mode I like. It waits for me to tap the screen to signal I’m done, so it rarely cuts me off when I pause to think—unlike ChatGPT, which often assumes I’ve finished talking. You can choose from five voices.

Create on the Go

Create Artifacts — interactive little applications — from your phone. You can make games, learning resources, document templates or other useful mini programs. You can also now use Claude Code from your phone.

What I most value about Claude is its excellent Projects feature, which lets me organize relevant documents and instructions for each distinct area of work.

I use other tools (like ChatGPT, Gemini) for images and video, which Claude doesn’t do, but I rely on Claude for assistance with alt-text, SEO text, project planning, and other tasks where understanding my context is crucial.

Copilot: A Flexible Assistant 🧑‍💼 iOS & Android

Microsoft’s Copilot app is a good free option that’s similar to ChatGPT and based on the same OpenAI models. One distinction is a new “real talk” mode that will sometimes challenge you. This helps address the sycophancy problem of AI chatbots blindly affirming your statements.

Other useful features: Copilot can generate a podcast episode on any subject (like this one about Wonder Tools). It can also generate an image, run a deep research report, quiz you on a subject of your choice, conduct a voice chat.

Like ChatGPT, it can even help you understand something in your environment. Turn on your camera or load something onto your screen, then ask Copilot questions something you’re looking at. Ask it about fine print in a document, a confusing gadget, a troubled plant🌾, or anything else.

Perplexity: The Quick Researcher 🧑‍🔬 iOS & Android

I rely on Perplexity for help understanding complex concepts. The mobile app’s voice mode is especially useful for quick searching and getting a summarized response instead of a list of links.

For niche searches, adjust Perplexity’s settings to focus only on finance info, academic sources, or social sites for Reddit results. You can also use Perplexity to search your Outlook email or your Gmail and Google Calendar📆 for messages on a particular subject.

Tip: Turn on incognito mode in settings anytime you’re searching on a sensitive or private subject. And as with all AI tools, avoid giving a thumbs up or down to a query because rating it signals that you’re OK with it being read and analyzed.

Read more about why I find Perplexity so useful

🎯 Free & Low-Cost AI App Alternatives

Locally AI 📍 iOS | Free

Benefits: Free. No log-in required. Fully private. No data tracking. Easy to use.

Getting started. Pick a compact open-source large language model suited for your phone’s processing power. I considered options from Qwen, Meta, and Google. Qwen 3 supports 100 languages and Meta’s Llama excels at summarization. I picked Gemma 3 QAT from Google. If you’re a tech novice or don’t care about those details, just pick Gemma as your model and you’ll be fine.

Brief wait to get started. I had to keep the app open for about two minutes to download the language model to my phone. You only have to do that once.

How I used it: I recently asked for a custom workout, given my constraints (no equipment, limited time) and personal fitness priorities. The result was helpful and similar to what I got from ChatGPT.

Nice features

* Customize or personalize your responses by inputting a prompt that will guide the app across all the individual chats. You can explain your personal or professional circumstances, for instance, or your preferences for concise or detailed answers, or any other needs you have for how the AI responds to you.

* Set up Siri shortcut. You can activate Siri and say “Hey Locally AI…” to run a local AI search privately with your voice.

* Well-reviewed. People seem to like it: 4.8/5 average rating with 208 reviews.

* Vision tools. You can use this private AI app for text recognition, object recognition or image comprehension. That’s useful if you want to use your phone privately to understand secure documents or convert personal handwritten notes into text. To get that benefit, within the app download the Qwen 2 VL model recommended for iPhone 15 or newer phones.

Caveats

* Not the top models. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini perform better for image analysis than the small mobile models this app enables.

* Slow start. Expect to wait several minutes each time you download a new model, including the first time you use the app.

* No plug-ins. I couldn’t connect this app to other services.

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Nice features

* One purchase for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Family sharing means you can share the app with five family members for free.

* Choose from 60+ models. Lots of models available in this app aren’t options in Locally AI. That may not matter, unless you’re eager to use a very specific model.

* Change AI models’ creativity level. Unlike Locally AI, this app allows you to adjust the “temperature” setting of your AI models to control how predictable or creative responses are. A model set to a low temperature sticks to more consistent, predictable answers, while one set to a higher temperature will generate more varied, imaginative replies.

Caveats

* Single chat stream. You can’t create multiple distinct chats in this app. Most other AI tools, including the Locally AI app, let you separate conversations into distinct threads for different subjects.

* No help picking models. Figuring out which one to try is tricky with this app. You can click a tiny information button that links to a separate Hugging Face web page about the model, but there’s no easy-to-understand summary for novices. Locally AI has helpful concise summaries showing each model’s strengths.

PocketPal AI | iOS and Android | Free

Nice features

* Fully Private. No conversations, prompts, or data leave your device.

* Create custom “pals.” Set up multiple AI assistants or “personalities,” with different settings and system prompts.

* Access models from Hugging Face. Choose from many small AI models.

Caveats

* May not work well on all Android phones. Depending on your phone’s age, the app might feel slow. A lot of Play Store reviewers reported this problem.

* Mediocre ratings. 4.1 out of 5 with 1,200 reviews is OK, but not stellar.

* The user interface lacks polish. The design isn’t as elegant as what you’ll find on Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other top-tier apps. But it’s free, and if the AI responses are useful, you may tolerate a lower-quality interface.

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