Artificial intelligence is beginning to change the way in which individuals work, discover data and even type social relationships. Yet little or no has modified in regards to the gadgets individuals typically use to entry AI: smartphones.
Samsung desires to change that with its Galaxy S26, a brand new sequence of smartphones introduced Wednesday.
The Galaxy S26, S26 Plus and S26 Ultra telephones will use AI to strive to predict what a consumer desires to do subsequent, and in some circumstances accomplish duties on their behalf. To this finish, Google is previewing a brand new characteristic for its Gemini assistant, beginning with ride-sharing, grocery and meals apps.
Gemini might have a look at a listing of visitors for a barbecue, then work within the background to construct a buying cart with the correct quantity of meals and provides for everybody attending. Or, if an S26 consumer has a flight developing in a few hours, the cellphone might show a button to name an Uber from the house or lock display with out having to launch the app.
Analysts say it’s an indication of what’s to come for smartphones: a world where customers do far much less tapping and swiping between apps, and AI brokers do the heavy lifting.
“It makes complete sense for (phone makers) to focus on this, because that is where we are headed. That is going to be the future of smartphones,” mentioned Nabila Popal, a senior director overlaying cell phones for International Data Corporation, a market analysis firm.
What’s unclear, nevertheless, is when precisely that future will materialize, or if it will really compel thousands and thousands of individuals to purchase a brand new cellphone. Smartphone makers have over time step by step infused software program with extra AI instruments—like the flexibility to seek for one thing simply by circling it on display or erasing undesirable objects from photographs. But analysts say most individuals purchase new telephones out of necessity and prioritize options like new colours, fancy cameras and higher screens.
“Nothing did more for smartphone sales last year than the color orange,” mentioned Runar Bjorhovde, a smartphone business analyst for market analysis agency Omdia, referring to the favored Cosmic Orange colour Apple launched for the iPhone 17 Pro final yr.
Beyond AI instruments, Samsung’s new telephones do embrace in style upgrades like a extra highly effective processor, a digicam that’s higher at taking photographs in the dead of night and new display expertise that prevents bystanders from seeing delicate data like pin codes and passwords.
But Drew Blackard, senior vp of cell product administration at Samsung Electronics America, informed NCS that no matter what shoppers spend cash on, AI brokers are the “big theme” of this yr’s telephones, persevering with the route it’s taken over the past couple of years.
Google is additionally centered on an agentic future, which is a part of why it’s working so intently with Samsung. Although Google makes its personal Pixel telephones, Samsung’s telephones are among the many most generally used on the earth — and subsequently essentially the most outstanding manner most individuals expertise Google’s Android working system.
“Today, the way that we see AI primarily being used is through things like chatbot interfaces, where you go and you ask what you want, and you get a response,” Sameer Samat, president of the Android ecosystem at Google, mentioned in an interview with NCS. “I think in the future, as this technology advances, there will be opportunities where the interface can be much more proactive as opposed to reactive.”
Galaxy S26 customers can even use voice instructions to carry out duties like modifying photographs and discovering system settings. If, for instance, they inform Samsung’s Bixby AI assistant that their eyes get drained after trying on the display for too lengthy, the assistant will pull up display brightness settings.
Perplexity’s AI assistant will even be embedded within the S26 telephones in its place choice to deal with requests.
Even as utilization soars for apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, AI isn’t among the many high three buy drivers for customers shopping for a brand new cellphone, in accordance to Popal. She mentioned worth, digicam and show high quality are normally the largest elements.
When Omdia requested shoppers about what they consider after they hear AI, 65% mentioned ChatGPT, whereas 20% mentioned they didn’t know, in accordance to Bjorhovde.
“They basically want a phone in which you can download the ChatGPT app,” he mentioned.
Meanwhile, AI utilization in enterprise has been choosing up steam, with a Menlo Ventures report from December calling enterprise AI the fastest-scaling software program class in historical past. And Pew Research Center data suggests US teenagers are more and more utilizing AI to assist with homework.
But Samat factors out that most enterprise AI instruments are designed for particular duties, whereas revamping how shoppers work together with smartphones could be a sweeping change.
“There’s an infinite number of things we’re all doing with our devices every day,” he mentioned.
Regardless of whether or not shoppers are occupied with AI when shopping for a brand new cellphone, Blackard says they’re nonetheless probably utilizing AI every day with out realizing it. That’s as a result of AI has lengthy powered many cellphone options behind the scenes, similar to the way in which the cameras course of photographs.
Samsung and Google aren’t the one companies racing to reinvent the smartphone for the AI age. Apple is growing an overhauled model of Siri powered by Google’s Gemini model that will present extra contextual solutions, though that replace has confronted delays. Apple has been step by step rolling out different AI options to iPhones and different merchandise since 2024.
A giant motivation for tech companies in that race, in accordance to Bjorhovde, is a worry of lacking out on the following large factor.
“The industry is struck with some of these lessons that were taught in the past,” he mentioned, “That if you don’t actually capture what happens in the market, it is so easy to fall behind just in a very low number of years.”