- Sabrina Ramonov
- Posts
- ChatGPT for Beginners (Part 2)
ChatGPT for Beginners (Part 2)
Can I use ChatGPT on my phone? What can I ask ChatGPT? What's the difference between models?
Sabrina Ramonov
September 20, 2024
This is part 2 of my free course, ChatGPT for Beginners.
Table of Contents
Can I use ChatGPT on my phone?
Yes, you can absolutely use ChatGPT on your phone!
You have 2 options and both are easy:
download official mobile app for iOS or Android
use your mobile browser
I’ll walk through both options.
Free Mobile App
OpenAI offers native mobile apps for both iOS and Android. These apps are free and come with some useful features like syncing your chat history across devices, so you can begin a chat on your laptop and continue it on your phone, or vice versa.
The mobile apps also include voice input, similar to Siri, so you can talk out loud to ChatGPT asking questions and getting answers back and forth.
Here’s the official description from OpenAI as of September 2024:
Introducing ChatGPT for iOS: OpenAI’s latest advancements at your fingertips.
This official app is free, syncs your history across devices, and brings you the newest model improvements from OpenAI.
With ChatGPT in your pocket, you’ll find:
· Voice mode—tap the Headphones icon to speak on the go, request a bedtime story for your family, or settle a dinner table debate.
· Creative inspiration—birthday gift ideas or help creating a personalized greeting card.
· Tailored advice—help crafting a personalized response or talking through a tough situation.
· Learning opportunities—help explaining electricity to a dinosaur loving kid or the ability to easily refamiliarize yourself with a historic event.
· Professional input—a brainstorm partner for marketing copy or a business plan.
· Instant answers—clarification whether the napkin goes on the right or the left of the plate or a recipe when you only have a few ingredients.
For iPhone users, download the OpenAI ChatGPT app directly from the App Store:
For Android users, download the OpenAI ChatGPT app directly from the Play Store:
Once installed, you can start talking to ChatGPT.
To enable voice mode, click on the headphones icon in the bottom right corner.
Watch out for copycat scam apps that force you to pay extra!
Make sure the app you’ve downloaded is from OpenAI and has over 1 million ratings.
Mobile Web Browser
If you don’t want to download the app, you can still use ChatGPT via your phone’s web browser. For iPhone users, your default browser is Safari, unless you’ve installed a different one. I personally use Google Chrome as my mobile web browser.
Simply open your browser on your phone, go to chatgpt.com, and start chatting. I recommend logging in so that your conversation history will be saved and accessible across devices.
This browser-based version still provides most of the features you’d expect, including the ability to ask questions, get advice, or brainstorm ideas.
But it doesn’t include voice mode.
Using ChatGPT on your phone is super useful for quick answers, inspiration, or productivity tasks while you’re on the go.
Whether you prefer apps or browsers, accessing ChatGPT on your phone is pretty easy!
What’s the difference between models?
As of September 2024, ChatGPT offers the following models:
GPT-4
GPT-4o
GPT-4o mini
o1-preview
o1-mini
Each model is optimized for different tasks, so knowing which one to use can help you get the most out of your interactions.
First, to find the models, go to chatgpt.com, and click this dropdown in the upper left corner, which lists the available models to choose from:
If you’re using the OpenAI API, you have access to older models, but I won’t cover those.
GPT-4
GPT-4 is a powerhouse model that handle a wide range of tasks, including complex problem-solving, content creation, and multimodal inputs like text, images, and voice.
I remember when it first came out! It wasn’t very long ago 😅
It truly blew my mind compared to its predecessor. GPT-3.5.
However, GPT-4 is heavy on computational resources, making it slower and more expensive. It’s now considered a “legacy model” which means it’s being phased out as OpenAI continues to release newer, better models.
GPT-4o
GPT-4o is a lighter, more optimized version of GPT-4 that demonstrates impressive performance on most general tasks while offering faster and cheaper responses.
If you’re doing everyday tasks like content creation, asking questions, or brainstorming, GPT-4o is the best default choice.
For my own daily use, GPT-4o is my default model.
I rarely switch to a different ChatGPT model.
GPT-4o mini
Think of GPT-4o mini as a budget-friendly alternative to GPT-4o.
It’s smaller, faster, and significantly cheaper, while still being pretty good at reasoning tasks like coding and math.
If you’re prototyping and experimenting, and you want to keep costs as low as possible, then GPT-4o mini is a great fit.
If you’re integrating ChatGPT into a product or app, and you need fast response times to ensure a high-quality user experience, then GPT-4o mini is a great fit.
o1-preview
The o1-preview model is designed to excel at complex reasoning tasks, especially in domains like STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
It tries to “think” through problems step-by-step and has already crushed competitive benchmarks for coding and problem-solving.
However, o1-preview does not have access to advanced tools that GPT-4o offers, like browsing the web, uploading files, or using memory to store context across conversations.
If you're working on complex, logic-heavy tasks, like math or coding, then o1-preview is your best bet.
o1-mini
For simpler reasoning tasks where cost and speed are a priority, o1-mini fits the bill.
As of September 2024, here are the limitations of both o1-preview and o1-mini:
Our OpenAI o1-preview and o1-mini models do not have access to the following advanced tools and features:
Memory
Custom instructions
Data analysis
File uploads
Web browsing
Discovering and using GPTs
Vision
Voice
You will need to switch over to GPT-4o to access these tools.
How are the o1 models different from previous models?
OpenAI hasn’t disclosed exactly how the o1 models were trained.
But, here’s the best guess in the community, based on analyzing OpenAI’s announcement and cited research papers:
Before o1, models were trained with human feedback that marked a correct final answer as a correct solution.
With o1, models are trained with human feedback that marked a solution correct ONLY IF the final answer AND the reasoning steps are both correct.
It’s the difference between a teacher grading your homework based on getting the correct answer versus grading your homework and looking at your reasoning steps to arrive at the correct answer.
Here’s more detailed information about the o1 model series.
Summary: When to Use Which Model?
GPT-4o for everyday usage like answering questions, writing, planning, etc.
GPT-4o mini if you need results faster and/or cheaper
o1-preview for complex reasoning or problem-solving tasks, like math and coding
o1-mini for simpler reasoning tasks and you need results faster and/or cheaper
GPT-4 is considered “legacy” so I don’t recommend using it
What can I ask ChatGPT?
When you're new to ChatGPT, it can feel overwhelming trying to figure out what it can do and what you can ask.
The reality:
ChatGPT is so versatile — you can ask it almost anything! (reasonably appropriate)
Whether you’re curious about historical facts, need a definition, or want to understand a concept better, ChatGPT acts like your personalized conversational search engine.
Just like you would type a search query into Google, you can ask ChatGPT:
“What is the capital of France?”
“Can you explain the theory of relativity in simple terms?”
It’s especially helpful when you need quick, digestible explanations on almost any subject.
And, you can get very different personalized answers by slightly adjusting your question.
Compare these 2 answers, in response to the same question, but varying contexts:
In addition to explanations and definitions, ChatGPT is an awesome collaborative partner for creative tasks and content creation.
You can ask it to brainstorm ideas for a project, write stories, craft a socially-acceptable work email, or draft social media posts:
Remember to give ChatGPT feedback on what you like and don’t like, so that it can learn your preferences over time and tailor its answers just the way you want.
For example, here I give ChatGPT feedback on the social media post it generated so it can update it to be more professional sounding:
One of my favorite use cases for ChatGPT is idea generation.
ChatGPT can rapidly spit out a hundred ideas on any topic, which helps me evaluate multiple different angles and possibilities.
Here, I ask ChatGPT to generate blog post ideas about fitness for beginners:
For more technical tasks, ChatGPT can help you write code, debug issues, explain existing code, and analyze documentation.
Below, I ask ChatGPT to write a python script for a specific use case (web scraping).
It’s also great at providing how-to instructions, e.g. how do I setup python for coding on my computer?
Another useful application is planning and organization. ChatGPT can help draft schedules, plan events, analyze a spreadsheet of attendees, recommend recipes, plan vacation itineraries, etc. You could ask:
“Create a 7-day workout plan for a beginner”
“Suggest meal ideas based on these ingredients: chicken, broccoli, and rice.”
ChatGPT can help you stay organized and save time by generating structured plans and lists, personalized to your needs.
Finally, ChatGPT for personal use and fun. You can ask for book recommendations, movie suggestions, or play text-based games.
The most important thing is to get comfortable interacting back-and-forth with ChatGPT, experiment a lot, change your phrasing to see what happens, and ask whatever comes to mind!
I’ve compiled 23 reddit threads, totaling thousands of comments, sharing how everyday people use ChatGPT. The number of creative uses for ChatGPT is truly astonishing 🤯
Has my free AI education helped you?
It would mean the world to me…
If you are willing to share your story and inspire others too! 😍🙏 😊
