ChatGPT

The ChatGPT app is a client for OpenAI’s models. Nearly everything it does is also available in a mobile browser, so the reason to install it is the things a web page cannot do well: voice conversations, camera input, and a share-sheet entry point from other apps.

What you get without paying

The free tier gives access to a capable model with usage limits that tighten during busy periods. Paid tiers raise those limits and add access to newer models. The distinction matters more than it sounds: a free session that has hit its cap silently falls back to a smaller model, and the drop in answer quality is noticeable.

Things worth knowing before you rely on it

• Conversations are used for training by default. There is a setting to turn that off, and it is not the default. If you paste anything you would not want retained, change it first.
• It states things confidently that are wrong. This is not an occasional glitch but a property of how the model works. For anything consequential — medical, legal, financial — treat output as a starting point for checking, not an answer.
• Voice mode is the genuinely different capability on mobile. It handles interruption and follow-ups in a way the text interface does not.

Storage and battery

The app is light, but voice mode is network- and battery-intensive. On a metered connection it consumes data at a rate closer to a video call than a chat app.