Samsung Releases New Flagship Phones With Focus on Easy-to-Use AI

By Jiyoung Sohn

SEOUL--Samsung Electronics said the artificial-intelligence features on its latest flagship Galaxy smartphones unveiled Wednesday were designed to work effortlessly without the user needing to figure out the technology.

"AI provides exactly what you need, exactly when you need it, without you having to go looking for it," said Kang Min-seok, a Samsung executive vice president who leads smartphone product planning.

In one example, users of the new phones can press the side button to call up an Uber ride, entering the destination by voice or text. In partnership with Google's Gemini AI, the phone will take care of opening the Uber app, inputting the address and finding a driver.

Samsung's Galaxy S26 phones, the company's flagship lineup, will hit the shelves in the U.S. and other markets on March 11.

Reflecting higher memory-chip prices, the price of the base model will rise $40 from the prior generation to about $900. The larger-screen Galaxy S26 Plus costs about $1,100, an increase of $100. The top-line Galaxy S26 Ultra is priced at $1,300, the same as the prior year's model.

Samsung says it has the most AI-enabled mobile devices of any company. It said roughly 800 million of its mobile devices--including smartphones, tablets, wearables and laptops--would be AI-enabled by the end of this year.

The South Korean company has often been ahead of Apple in bringing generative AI features to smartphones, such as the "circle-to-search" feature offered with Google that lets users search an image on the screen by circling it.

Samsung's internal research has found more than 80% of consumers think AI will be useful or necessary but the same proportion feel actually using it is hard. The Galaxy S26 phones deploy AI "without you even having to think about it," Kang said.

He said he expected the smartphone to be the main vehicle through which people make use of AI because its tools and hardware such as the screen make it hard to be fully replaced by AI-dedicated devices such as AI glasses.

With the Galaxy S26, photos can be edited directly in the gallery app by entering a prompt, such as a command to make a rainy day look sunny. If someone asks in a message about making lunch plans on a certain date, the user's schedule for the date will automatically appear on the side.

Some AI features are offered by connecting to outside services via the cloud, while others run locally on the device using Samsung's proprietary generative AI model called Gauss, Kang said. The company is continuing to develop Gauss for products and internal company systems, he said.

Write to Jiyoung Sohn at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-25-26 1314ET