Friedberg's claim was that the next major iPhone and flagship-Android cycle after February 2024 would ship with chips explicitly designed to run AI models locally and enable substantial on‑device AI features. That is what happened.

Apple's iPhone 16 lineup with A18 and A18 Pro chips (launched September 2024) is marketed as being built for Apple Intelligence; Apple states that many of the generative models behind Apple Intelligence run entirely on‑device, and that third‑party apps can call those on‑device models via the Foundation Models framework, with features that can work offline. (apple.com) Apple and press materials also describe the A18 Neural Engine as optimized for large generative models and significantly faster at running ML workloads, specifically to accelerate Apple Intelligence, and note that Apple Intelligence requires newer A‑series chips with sufficient GPU/NPU capacity for on‑device processing. (businesswire.com)

On Android, Samsung's Galaxy S25 series uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, whose substantially faster NPU is highlighted as enabling many more Galaxy AI experiences to run on‑device, including features like Generative Edit that previously relied on the cloud; Samsung also exposes a setting to disable cloud AI and rely only on local processing. (techpowerup.com) Google's Pixel 9 family, powered by the Tensor G4 chip, runs Google's Gemini Nano large language model locally; this on‑device LLM powers features such as Recorder summaries, Call Notes, Pixel Screenshots, and other real‑time summarization, translation, and captioning capabilities that operate without sending data to the cloud. (androidauthority.com) Other flagship SoCs like MediaTek's Dimensity 9400 and Samsung's Exynos platforms are likewise advertised as supporting on‑device generative AI, including multimodal Gemini Nano, underscoring that high‑end phones are now expected to run such models locally. (semiconductor.samsung.com)

Given that the post‑February‑2024 flagship cycles from Apple, Samsung, Google, and other major vendors did in fact ship with dedicated NPUs/AI engines specifically marketed for running sizable generative models on the device and enabling prominent on‑device AI features, Friedberg's prediction that the 'next set of mobile devices' would have chips that run models locally has been borne out.