Samsung Unpacked 2026: everything announced at the February event

On Thursday morning, I attended a Q&A panel with four top Samsung smartphone executives. Until 2025, Samsung was the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, and by association, the world’s largest maker of cameras. It’s still the second largest after Apple.

Samsung handed me the microphone first. I asked:

Magnet rings have changed my life. I grip and mount and satisfyingly snap awesome accessories on and off my phone all day. Even Samsung sells neat ones, like these folding magnetic mirrors. But unlike Apple and Google, Samsung refuses to put the magnets inside the phone.

Why? I asked Samsung’s Won-Joon Choi, the executive in charge of both R&D and operations for Samsung’s mobile business. He says the added thickness of magnets is a bad tradeoff to make, because you’re just going to buy a case anyhow.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus are “more of the same for more money,” my colleague Allison Johnson reported this week. Now, Samsung is confirming what we previously only suspected: RAMageddon is partly to blame.

Samsung’s Won-Joon Choi, the COO of its mobile business, tells The Verge that the memory shortage alone made a “significant contribution” to the price. All the increasing material costs factored into the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus costing $100 more than their predecessors this year, as did tariffs, but the memory was “significant,” he tells me.

Samsung has just announced its new Galaxy S26 lineup, which includes the S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra. While they aren’t radical departures from last year’s models, they bring a handful of notable upgrades. All three run on Qualcomm’s Galaxy-centric Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which delivers improved performance and powers a slew of new AI-based features. This includes the ability to screen unknown calls and edit photos by typing what you want changed, along with an update to Google Gemini that can carry out certain tasks in supported third-party apps, like Uber and DoorDash, on your behalf.

Starting at $899.99, the S26 is the smallest and most affordable of the trio. It features a 6.3-inch OLED display, weighs just under 6 ounces, and has a 4,300mAh battery. Its rear cameras include a 50-megapixel main sensor, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and a 10-megapixel telephoto lens. Like its siblings, it supports a 120Hz refresh rate, starts with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and includes wireless charging.

Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S26 lineup at its recent Unpacked event in San Francisco. As expected, the new series consists of the baseline S26, which starts at $899.99, and the bigger S26 Plus, which starts at $1,099.99. At the high end, there’s also the $1,299.99 S26 Ultra, which is the largest in the lineup and comes with a bigger battery, better cameras, S Pen support, and expanded options for both storage and RAM. The price difference between Samsung’s cheapest and most expensive S26 phones is $400 (last year, it was $500).

While some of its updated Galaxy AI software features are new, it’s another year of minor hardware updates for Samsung’s flagship phones. However, there are some notable changes that you should know about upfront. The base S26 costs $100 more than last year’s model, but comes with 256GB of storage instead of 128GB. It also has a bigger battery and a slightly larger 6.3-inch screen (not great news if you appreciated the S25’s smaller size), but it’s now missing mmWave 5G support. The S26 Plus is $100 more, yet, as noted in the chart below, it offers even fewer upgrades.

Google just announced that Gemini will soon be able to take care of some multistep tasks on your phone, like ordering food or hailing a car, starting first with the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and the just-announced Samsung Galaxy S26 phones. It all sounds a bit like features Apple announced for Siri way back at the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference — before Apple delayed those planned features in March 2025 and which still aren’t released.

Onstage, Sameer Samat, Google’s president of Android, showed off a demo of how Gemini’s new agentic features would work to help wrangle a pizza dinner order from his busy family group chat. Samat asks Gemini to look at the chat thread and figure out what to order, and then make the order with a delivery app. Onscreen — in a prerecorded video, it wasn’t live — you can see Gemini figuring out what everyone wants from the group chat and showing that in a window. Then the user, via voice request, tells Gemini to complete that order, naming a specific pizzeria. Gemini then clicks through Grubhub to prep the order, all still onscreen. When the order is ready, Gemini sends an alert so the user can review it and actually press the submit button.

As expected, Samsung has taken the wraps off its flagship lineup for 2026. Introduced during the company’s recent Unpacked event, the new Galaxy devices — which include the standard S26, the larger S26 Plus, and the high-end S26 Ultra — will be available on March 11th. Preorders are now open ahead of launch, with pricing starting at $899.99 for the base-model S26, $1,099.99 for the Plus, and $1,299.99 for the Ultra.

Overall, the forthcoming S26 lineup looks largely similar to last year’s S25 series, only with a handful of notable upgrades. The biggest changes this year are on the software side, with Samsung introducing a privacy display in the S26 Ultra that hides what you’re looking at from others. You also get new AI-powered features enabled by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy processor, including a call screening tool and generative photo editing tools that allow you to type what you want changed. Samsung is also rolling out early support for a more advanced version of Gemini, which can handle certain tasks in supported apps without you having to do everything manually.

The next Galaxy Buds have been announced, and Samsung again mimics Apple in design, ecosystem functionality, and pricing. The Galaxy Buds 4 and Galaxy Buds 4 Pro keep the AirPods-esque design of the Buds 3, but now have a flat metal surface along the stem’s exterior.

The regular buds use a single 11mm dynamic speaker and do not have silicone ear tips, while the Buds 4 Pro have a selection of silicone ear tips and a two-way design (meaning a woofer for lower frequencies and a tweeter for the high end), just like the Buds 3 Pro. There’s a 5.5mm planar tweeter and a new 11mm “super wide woofer” with an effective area nearly 20 percent larger than the last generation, which leads to 50 percent less distortion, according to Samsung.

Maybe it’s a reflection of just how slow hardware innovation has been, but the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s new Privacy Display, which limits the screen’s viewing angle to keep any would-be peepers away, left me totally impressed.

It’s not a brand-new technology — we’ve seen it before in laptops — and it was leaked thoroughly before Samsung’s announcement. But seeing it work on the S26 Ultra for the first time was cooler than I expected, especially given that hardware thrills are hard to get these days.

There’s a cool new hardware feature debuting at Samsung’s annual Unpacked event — but you won’t find it on the Galaxy S26 or S26 Plus. While the Ultra model gets a new Privacy Display and avoids a price hike, Samsung’s base models are largely software updates that cost more than the outgoing models.

Don’t get me wrong, some of those software updates are pretty neat. You can apply Audio Eraser to third-party apps to make voices easier to hear and filter out background noise. Google’s Gemini AI will start doing agentic things — like booking an Uber for you — which is a step toward fulfilling the promise of an assistant that actually assists. A few Pixel features are rubbing off on the S26 series, too, like scam detection for phone calls and contextual information that surfaces in the keyboard. But many of these features are likely to make their way to previous years’ models.

Google’s Gemini AI is getting one step closer to being more like an actual assistant. Starting with some Pixel 10 phones and the Samsung Galaxy S26 series, Gemini will be able to hail an Uber or put together a DoorDash order on its own.

It’s called task automation, and it starts with a prompt to Gemini — something like “Get me an Uber to the Palace of Fine Arts.” Gemini then launches the app in a virtual window on your device and goes through the process step-by-step. You can watch it all happen, with options to stop the automation or take control if necessary, or just let it run in the background while Gemini does its thing. The assistant will notify you if it needs your attention to choose between two options, or if something you asked it to look for is out of stock. Once your ride or grocery cart is all set, Gemini will alert you to take a look and submit the final order yourself.

We’re here in San Francisco, where Samsung is set to unveil its new Galaxy S26 series phones and probably some accessories to go with them starting at 1PM ET. Keep in mind this isn’t Samsung’s foldy phone event, which usually occurs in the summer.

One of the things we’re most curious about is whether the RAMageddon has impacted prices for these phones. And, of course, whether there are any new AI features to discuss. Stick around for the news and banter.

Samsung is set to introduce its new Galaxy S26 lineup at its next Unpacked event on February 25th, potentially alongside a new pair of earbuds and other wearables. If you’re thinking about picking up any of the new devices, it’s worth claiming Samsung’s $30 promotional credit before it expires, which you can do by registering your interest on Samsung’s website before 1PM ET / 10AM PT tomorrow.

If you’re even remotely considering an upgrade, there’s not much to lose by signing up. You don’t need to pay anything or even offer your credit card details to take advantage of the offer. You just need to reserve a device by signing up with your name and email address on Samsung’s website or the Shop Samsung app ahead of the event. Once the devices are officially announced and preorders open, you’ll be able to apply the $30 credit at checkout. Sadly, you can’t use the $30 credit to reduce the cost of your phone or any other Samsung device announced during Unpacked; however, you can use it for all kinds of accessories.

Another Unpacked is nearly upon us. On February 25th, Samsung is expected to announce the Galaxy S26 series of flagship phones — potentially including the S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra — with another round of AI-based features. That will come as a surprise to nobody. But as more AI creeps in on Samsung’s AI phones, there’s one important consideration: the slop factor.

I’m talking, of course, about AI slop. Last week, Samsung put out a blog post promoting a new “seamless Galaxy camera experience” on its newest phones. Based on the examples in the article, that experience includes turning a picture of a puppy into cute little stickers, filling in the part of a cupcake you took a bite out of, brightening video in low light to make it more lively, and editing a picture of a cow in a field to make it look like it’s being abducted by aliens.

In addition to summoning Bixby or Gemini, Galaxy S26 users will be able to call on Perplexity by saying “hey, Plex.” The integration of Perplexity into Galaxy AI is just one element of the company’s embrace of a “multi-agent ecosystem.”

Often, people will use different AI agents for different tasks, depending on where their strengths lie. So Samsung is opening up the ability to integrate different agents into the OS. Hey, Plex isn’t just some transparent version of the app baked into a Galaxy phone to quickly get answers to questions. Perplexity will have access to Samsung Notes, Clock, Gallery, Reminder, and Calendar, as well as select third-party apps, though which ones specifically Samsung didn’t say.

After cramming AI into every inch of its smartphones, appliances, and other devices, Samsung is now increasingly slapping it across social media. Several videos posted to the company’s YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok accounts in recent weeks were made or edited using generative AI tools, including its latest teaser for the upcoming Galaxy S26 series.

The “Brighten your after hours” video features two people skateboarding at night, and supposedly shows off the low-light video capabilities of the upcoming Galaxy S26 devices. Fine print appears at the bottom of the screen toward the end of the video, flagging that it was “generated with the assistance of AI tools,” but there are obvious signs even without the disclosure. The vegetable-laden shopping bags look artificial and unnaturally weighted, for example, and cobblestones in the road appear to shift around.

It looks like Samsung is preparing to launch a new Qi2 battery pack for the upcoming Galaxy S26, which is rumored to support the upgraded charging standard. A report from Winfuture shows off leaked images of what appears to be the new accessory, outfitted with a magnetic Qi2 charging ring that delivers up to 15W of power, along with a USB-C cable offering up to 20W.

Winfuture suggests that the wireless power bank itself will have a 5,000mAh battery capable of charging at up to 25W. The battery pack also appears to come with an arm that you can fold out to use as a stand. This isn’t the first time we’re hearing about this accessory; last December, 9to5Google spotted a Samsung “Magnetic Wireless Battery Pack” in the Wireless Power Consortium’s database.