Gemini AI assistant on Samsung 26S Ultra smartphone during a product preview event on Monday, February 23, 2026 in San Francisco, California, USA.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
samsung announced its latest flagship smartphone lineup, the Galaxy S26 series, on Wednesday. alphabetFront and center of Gemini Artificial Intelligence.
This would give the search giant’s AI technology a major foothold in the mobile space, just before it is expected to be included in a revamped Siri. apple‘s iPhone.
The S26 is notable for packing a huge number of AI systems into a single device.
Samsung has integrated three separate AI engines. It’s an upgraded version of Google’s Gemini for agent tasks like booking rides and navigating between apps, Perplexity for web-based queries, and Samsung’s own Bixby as an on-device assistant with a more capable in-house large-scale language model.
This is a multi-agent approach that reflects how central the AI arms race is to smartphone sales and how Samsung is actively hedging risk across providers rather than relying on a single provider.
Still, the deepest of these partnerships is with Google.
Samsung was the first phone manufacturer to ship Gemini when it launched the Galaxy S24 in January 2024. A year later, it has deepened its integration with the S25, allowing you to access Gemini with a long press of the side button. With the introduction of S26, Gemini can now do something it couldn’t do before: perform autonomous actions within Samsung apps as well as third-party apps.
The relationship hasn’t always been smooth sailing, as Samsung has spent years promoting its own Tizen operating system and Bixby assistant to establish independence from Google’s ecosystem. But in the AI era, the two companies are arm in arm more closely than ever, even as Samsung is simultaneously courting Perplexity to diversify its options.
As a result, Samsung has become the most important distribution channel for Google’s consumer AI. And Apple, despite its billion-dollar deal with Gemini, still can’t match it.
Introducing an upgraded Siri
Apple confirmed in January that it had signed a multi-year deal reportedly worth $1 billion a year to use Google’s Gemini model as the basis for its overhauled Siri. However, the upgrade schedule keeps slipping.
Apple had initially planned to roll out the iOS 26.4 update in March or April, but Bloomberg reported earlier this month that some features could be pushed back to May or even September.
Samsung’s S26 is available for pre-order now and will be generally available on March 11th. This means Gemini’s cutting-edge agent functionality will first reach consumers through Samsung mobile phones.
According to Counterpoint Research, Apple accounts for roughly 25% of the world’s active smartphone installed base, compared to Samsung’s 18%, and iPhone users tend to spend more on apps and services.
While the Apple deal is the bigger prize, Samsung is the place where Google can now prove its AI works in the real world, and it’s a live showcase for the technology that will ultimately underpin the return of Siri.
Using the Samsung agent
At the heart of Samsung’s pitch is agent AI, and Gemini is the engine that makes it possible.
Charles Uptegrove, product manager for Samsung’s flagship devices in the US, told CNBC in a briefing that the AI assistant can work directly with Samsung’s native apps such as Calendar, Reminders and Samsung Notes.
“Users can ask Gemini to find important events and add them directly to their calendar,” Uptegrove said. “Consumers can also use Gemini to retrieve information from YouTube videos. For example, they can ask for content to be summarized and added to Samsung Notes.”
The most specific example is Uber.
Users can call up Gemini, ask it to book a ride, and let the AI handle the entire process (opening apps, selecting options, scrolling the screen, etc.) in the background while the user does something else. Samsung said it plans to expand this to additional ridesharing apps and eventually food delivery services, including: instacart and door dash.
This is a meaningful step up from the S25, where the Gemini could only interact with Samsung’s own native apps. AI agents can now access third-party services and process multi-step tasks in the background.
Still, it’s worth keeping Samsung’s influence in mind.
Apple will overtake Samsung as the world’s top smartphone seller in 2024, ending its 12-year reign as the market leader. In November, Counterpoint Research found that Apple’s iPhone shipments are on track to surpass Samsung’s for the first time in 14 years.
Beyond AI, the S26 Ultra introduces a built-in privacy display that Samsung calls a mobile industry first. This allows you to control how individual pixels disperse light to hide the screen from side angles while keeping the screen easy for users to read.
Samsung has said it expects the number of Galaxy AI-enabled devices to reach 400 million worldwide, and the number of Gemini-powered mobile devices to double to 800 million this year, but the most important number for Google right now isn’t Samsung’s numbers, but Apple’s timeline for overhauling Siri.
