The best anti-AI smartphones in 2026: Expert tested and recommended
Tech Updated on: August 4, 2026 at 4:00 AM PDT Home Tech Smartphones Updated on: August 4, 2026 at 4:00 AM PDT The best anti-AI smartphones in 2026: Expert tested and recommended Sick to death of unwanted AI features getting stuffed into your smartphone? We tested the best models from Apple, Samsung, and more that forego AI in favor of features you actually need. Written by Taylor Clemons, Staff WriterStaff Writer Reviewed by Alison DeNisco Rayome ZDNET experts put every product through rigorous testing and research to curate the best options for you.
- ▪Tech Updated on: August 4, 2026 at 4:00 AM PDT Home Tech Smartphones Updated on: August 4, 2026 at 4:00 AM PDT The best anti-AI smartphones in 2026: Expert tested and recommended Sick to death of unwanted AI features getting stuffed into yo
- ▪We tested the best models from Apple, Samsung, and more that forego AI in favor of features you actually need.
- ▪Written by Taylor Clemons, Staff WriterStaff Writer Reviewed by Alison DeNisco Rayome ZDNET experts put every product through rigorous testing and research to curate the best options for you.
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | ZDNet |
| Canonical URL | https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-phones-without-ai-features/ |
| Publication time | Tue, 04 Aug 2026 11:00:55 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-04T11:05:47.220Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-04T11:05:47.220Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | SUxBHlNTuZ4A · 3 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Tech Updated on: August 4, 2026 at 4:00 AM PDT Home Tech Smartphones Updated on: August 4, 2026 at 4:00 AM PDT The best anti-AI smartphones in 2026: Expert tested and recommended Sick to death of unwanted AI features getting stuffed into your smartphone? We tested the best models from Apple, Samsung, and more that forego AI in favor of features you actually need. Written by Taylor Clemons, Staff WriterStaff Writer Reviewed by Alison DeNisco Rayome ZDNET experts put every product through rigorous testing and research to curate the best options for you. If you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn Our Process 'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at ZDNet.
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