Samsung Electronics Co will unveil its latest mainstream Galaxy smartphones on Feb 25 at an event in San Francisco, hoping to spur upgrades and fresh momentum in its rivalry with Apple Inc’s iPhone and Android-based competitors.
The debut of the Galaxy S26 series will mark "a new phase in the era of AI as intelligence becomes truly personal and adaptive,” the company said Feb 10 in a statement.
The new handsets are expected to closely resemble the last several generations of the Galaxy S. By contrast, Apple recently touted record demand for its iPhone 17 series, which brought a substantial redesign to the high-end models and marked the introduction of an ultra-thin iPhone Air.
Samsung beat Apple to market with the slim Galaxy S25 Edge last year, but it’s unclear whether an Edge sequel is on the agenda for the Unpacked event given limited sales. For 2026, Samsung’s focus is more concentrated on new artificial intelligence features and some novel hardware upgrades.
The company recently teased a privacy display that would prevent people nearby from snooping on an unsuspecting S26 owner’s screen, making it harder to see from certain angles. Some third-party screen protectors offer similar protections, but Samsung has apparently built it into the actual phone.
Samsung has also been working to expand the capabilities of its Galaxy AI software and offer customers more choice. The company currently leans on Google Gemini for many of its AI-powered features, but it has been working on integrating services from OpenAI and Perplexity AI Inc.
"As long as these AI agents are competitive and can provide the best user experiences, we are open to any AI agent out there,” Choi Won-Joon, president and chief operating officer of Samsung’s mobile division, told Bloomberg in July.
Samsung’s foldable devices, which won’t be updated until later in the year, are more flashy and versatile than its traditional handsets. Last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 broke new ground in thinness – finally feeling like a normal phone in hand when folded shut – and products like the US$2,899 (RM11,374) Galaxy Z TriFold represent an impressive feat of engineering despite being impractical for the vast majority of users.
But sales of folding phones lag far behind those of regular bar-style models, which is why each Galaxy S-series launch is crucial for the company. Samsung could also use the February Unpacked presentation to debut new wireless earbuds and other accessories. – Bloomberg
