Samsung Unveils First Gemini Phone AI Agent, Memory Shortage Drives Up Prices for Two S26 Models

On February 25 local time, Samsung Electronics held Galaxy Unpacked 2026 event in San Francisco, officially unveiling three new smartphones of S26 series, including S26、S26+ and S26 Ultra.

All three models are equipped with the Gemini AI agent, while retaining the Perplexity web search engine and Bixby, the on-device assistant powered by Samsung's self-developed large language model. At the event, Samsung also demonstrated the phone-based AI agent powered by Google's Gemini for the first time, which can autonomously perform cross-app tasks such as ordering food and ride-hailing services. 

As for specifications, three new models share the same core configuration for Chinese market, debuting with Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy custom chip. Compared to the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, the core architecture and clock speeds have been exclusively optimized, featuring 2 super cores at 4.74GHz and 6 performance cores at 3.63GHz. The super core clock speed has been increased from 4.6GHz in the standard version to 4.74GHz, making it the highest-clocked mobile chip in Android currently.

In terms of pricing, the starting prices for the base S26 and S26+ have both increased by $100 compared to their predecessors, reaching $899 and $1,099 respectively, while the starting price for the flagship Galaxy S26 Ultra remains at $1,299.