Samsung Galaxy S26 and Buds 4 announced during Unpacked 2026

If you're going to San Francisco... you can visit Samsung Galaxy Unpacked. The event has wrapped, and it can really be summed up in two letters: AI. These two letters are a huge dividing line among people. The fact is that Samsung no longer makes mobile phones; they make AI phones.

"Our belief is that AI should be something people can rely on in their everyday lives, designed to work consistently for everyone without requiring any technical expertise. With the Galaxy S26 series, we have focused on making AI as smooth and natural as possible, with the technology working discreetly in the background so that people can focus their energy on what really matters.", said TM Roh, Chief Executive Officer, President, and Head of Device eXperience (DX) Division of Samsung Electronics, to us gathered inside the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts building in San Francisco. It felt somewhat paradoxical to be in a place designed to look like a Roman ruin while listening to what the future holds.

The big problem was that most of what was shown did not come as a surprise, as far too much had already been leaked online long ago. Personally, I find this disappointing, as those wow moments always feel special. The Samsung Galaxy S26 offers some excellent features, one of which is something we have never seen before in a mobile phone and which I believe will become standard in the future. What I'm talking about here is something called Privacy Display. You may have experienced this before at, say, a bank, where the screen cannot be seen from the sides and only the person sitting directly in front of the computer can see what is on the screen. This usually involves a sticker-type screen protector, whereas in the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, it is built into the screen. It will be possible to hide the entire screen at all times, hide notifications, protect you when you enter passwords, and hide the screen when you open apps that you have chosen to enable the feature for. If you were to ask me which single feature makes the S26 Ultra stand out from the crowd, it would be this one. A genuinely useful feature in real life.

In short, it works by blocking the amount of light emitted by certain pixels, and in which direction, using physical rings. Like a frame, basically. Pixels are usually designed to emit light at as wide an angle as possible for better visibility. Privacy Display uses a technology that Samsung calls Black Matrix, which makes the light go straight ahead, as if you had put a toilet roll in front of a torch. According to a previous press release, this is something the company has been working on for five years, and after holding the phone in my own hands, I can only say that they have succeeded.

Then there was the matter of AI. It has been very difficult to avoid these two letters during our days in San Francisco. At a preview event at City View at Metreon, I couldn't even go for a coffee without seeing Galaxy AI on top of muffins. While waiting for the big Unpacked event to start, it wasn't the Galaxy S26 rolling across the screen, it was Galaxy AI. And the idea is that Galaxy AI will reduce the steps between intention and action.

This could be anything from the Now Nudge feature, which automatically finds relevant information for you. If a friend asks you for a photo from a specific trip, you don't have to go into the album and scroll through hundreds of photos if you don't want to. Now Nudge will instead suggest relevant photos from the album based on what your friend asked for. Or if you receive a message from someone wanting to meet up for lunch, the Galaxy S26 will automatically check your calendar to see if you are free on that day and at that time. There's also the improved Circle to Search with Google feature, where you can circle something in your photo and the identification now works on multiple objects at the same time.

For anyone worried that AI will take over our lives, I can only say that our mobile phones have already been taken over, in the Galaxy S26 by Bixby, Gemini, and Perplexity. I will go through how well all these features actually work in real life, and not just on paper, in my review of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra once I have had a little more time to spend with it.

As you have probably already noticed, I have not written anything about the other two variants of the Galaxy S26. However, I am not alone in this. The phones that most people will buy, the S26 and S26 Plus, were not mentioned much by Samsung themselves either, with the focus being more on the Ultra model. My experience of the S26 and S26 Plus therefore doesn't extend much further than what I was able to feel and squeeze on the evening before Galaxy Unpacked. The base model Galaxy S26 has a larger screen (6.3-inch FHD+) than the Galaxy S25 and is therefore also larger and wider, 149.6 x 71.7 x 7.2 mm compared to 146.9 x 70.5 x 7.2 mm. As for the S26 Plus, it is almost identical to the S25 Plus in terms of size and many other features. It has the same camera system, the same RAM and storage sizes, and the same battery capacity of 4900 mAh, although wireless charging is faster at 20W instead of 15W. The question is whether these two models are not a little too similar to each other. Both the S26 and S26 Plus have the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy processor, Exynos 2600.

What about the price? The Galaxy S26 Ultra starts at a recommended price of £1,279, the Galaxy S26+ at £1,099, and the Galaxy S26 at £879. They can be ordered now ahead of the launch on 11 March. As I said, I will be reviewing the S26 Ultra and giving you my thoughts on the phone in the not too distant future.

However, I will not be able to do the same for the second of the two products announced by Samsung, namely the Galaxy Buds4 earphones, which also come in a Pro model. The difference is that the Galaxy Buds4 Pro are in-ear earphones, while the Galaxy Buds4 have an open design. For someone like me, who finds it difficult to find in-ear headphones that fit well and don't try to fall out every other minute, it was nice to hear that they had taken into account that people actually have different ear shapes. One size doesn't fit all. Apparently, they used hundreds of millions of global ear measurements and over 10,000 simulations. I have to say that they actually fit like a glove, wedged snugly in my ears, during the admittedly very short time I had with the Pro model. And hidden beneath the surface is a speaker area that is almost 20 per cent larger than the previous generation, as they have maximised the vibration surface and minimised the speaker's edge. This is supposed to support 24-bit/96kHz audio. It's difficult for me to give any greater opinion on the quality after only having them in my ears for a few minutes, but they play music and the active noise cancellation (ANC), which is also said to be improved, works.

"Our design philosophy with the Galaxy Buds4 series is to offer comfort without compromising on sound performance, as that is what users value most. We have combined our most powerful HiFi sound with our most secure and ergonomic fit to enhance each other and deliver the best listening experience we have ever created," said Ikhyun Cho, Corporate VP of Mobile Enhancement R&D Team, Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics.

As you may have noticed, there are currently no over-ear headphones available, and this was something that Han-gil Moon, VP of Technology at Samsung Electronics, was asked about during an interview. It does not appear that any are in the pipeline in the near future, but the response was that the company is always looking at opportunities to meet customer demands.

So as I begin my journey home from San Francisco, away from the Golden Gate bridges, roaring sea lions, and very steep hills, with a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra in my pocket, I look forward to trying out all the things they talked about. Super-Fast Charging 3.0, which charges up to 75 per cent in 30 minutes. Improved Nightography Video. AI ISP, which now also includes the selfie camera, even though I very rarely take selfies. The Photo Assist suite, where I can edit an image by typing in a prompt, such as removing all the fog around the Golden Gate Bridge and instead adding some very happy Golden State Warriors basketball players dunking huge balls into the water below. AI-based tools such as Document Scanner, which can turn even crumpled papers into neat PDF files. And last but not least, the aforementioned Privacy Display, which will actually affect the people around me more than myself. Will everything work as advertised? That remains to be seen, but at least I've already started tinkering with it.