Taxi to the Airport, Strawberry Cake... Just Say the Word and It Appears: Galaxy S26 AI 'Wow!'

Agent AI Features Designed to Help with Everyday Life
Advanced Image Tools Make Almost Any Imaginable Edit Possible
Emoji Creation and Scanning Tasks Become Effortless

"Call an Uber taxi to San Francisco Airport."

A scene using the Gemini AI installed on the Galaxy S26. Photo by Kim Bokyung

With that single spoken phrase, the Uber application opened automatically. This is a new feature of the Galaxy S26 series unveiled at Samsung Electronics' "Galaxy Unpacked 2026" held in San Francisco, United States, on the 25th (local time). While Gemini, the Google AI agent inside the Galaxy, was searching for a taxi, I was able to use other apps as usual. I could check the progress from time to time and choose whether to stop or continue. Once Gemini finished searching for a taxi to the airport, a notification popped up, and all I had to do was decide which taxi to choose by price range and proceed with the payment. The tedious process of opening a taxi app, searching for the destination on the map step by step, and tapping buttons to call a taxi was eliminated. Samsung explained that this feature will also be applied to the KakaoT app in Korea.

The Galaxy S26 is Samsung Electronics' third-generation AI phone, with enhanced AI agent capabilities that proactively understand the user's context and intent. It is designed to blend deeply into users' daily lives, provide practical assistance, and increase efficiency by shortening task time. The newly introduced "Now Nudge" feature is a personalized service that uses Samsung's own agent, Bixby. After checking a friend's message saying, "I want to see the photos we took on our trip to Australia," I clicked on the reply input field, and a suggestion labeled "Share photos" appeared on the bottom bar. When I tapped it, photos taken during the trip to Australia automatically appeared, and I could immediately send them to my friend by selecting and sharing. The Now Nudge feature likewise shortened the series of steps of entering the photo gallery app, searching for photos, and selecting them. When I received a message asking, "Are you available for a meeting on the morning of February 27?" the AI also suggested opening the calendar in a "nudge" manner, allowing me to easily check whether I already had an appointment.

A scene of calling an Uber taxi by voice command using the Gemini AI installed on the Galaxy S26. By Kim Bokyung, reporter.

Users can quickly and easily change smartphone settings they need through conversations with Bixby. For example, voice commands such as "Lower the screen brightness" were also possible. This feature seemed useful when you are not sure which menu to open in the Settings app. The newly added "Creative Studio" feature allowed users to turn desired photos, such as a dog, into characters and create emojis that can be used on social networking services (SNS), and then use them like stickers. The scan feature also looked practical for those times when you want to capture and save a document neatly. After opening the camera app and shooting in the "Scan" mode, it automatically removed unnecessary elements such as shadows or fingers and provided the result as a PDF file.

A newly introduced AI image-editing tool on the Galaxy S26. It turned a cake with one slice missing into a whole cake with a single voice command. It can also transform a single-slice cake into a whole cake. Reporter Kim Bokyung

The "Privacy Display," introduced for the first time in the global mobile industry, was another standout. If you have worried about others peeking at your phone screen in cramped spaces like subways or elevators, this feature helps ease that concern. When I pulled down the top bar on the Galaxy S26 Ultra home screen, the Privacy Display menu appeared, and I could selectively apply the feature only to the applications or notification windows I wanted. When I changed the angle of the phone, the screen became darker, making it difficult for the person next to me to see it with the naked eye.

The advanced AI functions for realizing imagined images delivered even more surprising innovation. With a single spoken phrase, it turned a cake with only one slice left into a whole cake, and transformed a plain whipped-cream cake into a pink strawberry cake. After taking a selfie, I could change the background to a night view of San Francisco, and a newly introduced feature allowed me to combine two photos into one. AI functions that change images exactly as I want and imagine have been realized on the Galaxy S26. It was easy to revert to the previous version of the image, and multiple edits were possible using the "Continue editing" feature. However, tasks related to portrait rights, such as changing a face to that of a specific person, were not allowed.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.