NAIROBI, Kenya- The modern smartphone has reached a plateau.
Hardware improvements still arrive every year, but they no longer land with the jolt they once did. Cameras get brighter sensors. Displays receive marginal refinements. Processors grow faster in ways most users rarely feel.
But beneath the glass, something else is shifting.
At Galaxy Unpacked last night, Samsung made it clear that the centre of gravity has moved from hardware to software cognition. With the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, the company demonstrated a phone that spends less time reacting to taps — and more time interpreting intent.
The S26 Ultra watches patterns, anticipates tasks, and in some cases, acts before the user explicitly asks. What Samsung is building is not just a smarter phone, but a more assertive one.
From Assistants to Delegation
Across the smartphone industry, digital assistants are no longer framed as conversational tools. The ambition has shifted toward delegation.
Google’s Google Gemini now interprets context across apps, messages, and documents before carrying out tasks — from ordering rides to assembling delivery orders and pulling information from multiple conversations.
Samsung’s latest flagship provides one of the clearest windows into this transition. While Unpacked featured the usual talk of cameras, chips, and displays, the deeper story lived in software. Many of the most striking demos had little to do with hardware at all.
What Samsung showed felt less like feature additions and more like an experiment in what happens when smartphones start taking initiative.
Now Nudges: When the Phone Reads the Room
The most revealing addition is Now Nudges — contextual prompts that scan activity across messages, photos, and apps to propose actions when patterns emerge.
If someone texts asking for weekend photos, the phone surfaces images taken with that person. Mention a location in a conversation, and navigation suggestions appear.
Contextual hints aren’t new. The ambition behind them is.
Instead of occasional reminders, the S26 Ultra attempts to maintain a running interpretation of what’s happening across the device. The goal is no longer reaction — it’s anticipation.
That depends heavily on on-device processing, enabled by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which Samsung says delivers a 39pc improvement in AI performance.
Modern smartphones are now dedicating serious computing power to interpreting behaviour, not just executing commands.
Audio Eraser and the Rise of Editable Reality
Audio Eraser is one of the most tangible examples of this shift.
The feature separates voices, ambient noise, and background sounds after recording. Users can suppress wind, amplify dialogue, or rebalance sound entirely.
Instead of accepting the conditions present at the moment of recording, the phone treats audio as editable material — a broader trend where AI turns captured media into something flexible, not fixed.
Generative Editing and Creative Studio
Photo editing follows the same logic.
Inside the gallery, users can now describe changes in text: remove a person, adjust the sky, add elements behind a subject. The phone interprets the instruction and generates the image content.
Results will vary, but the shift is clear. Creativity on smartphones is becoming collaborative rather than manual.
Samsung extends this to the S Pen environment with Creative Studio, where users generate wallpapers, invitations, or stickers through text prompts. The phone becomes both tool and designer.
Smarter Scanning, Stronger Gatekeeping
The document scanner now repairs shadows, stains, and distortions automatically — aligning with Samsung’s broader goal of understanding what users intended to capture, not just what the camera saw.
Call screening pushes this idea further. Unknown numbers are intercepted, questioned, transcribed, and presented for approval. The phone increasingly acts as a gatekeeper between users and the outside world.
Automation Changes the App Economy
Automation was the most ambitious showcase.
With a single instruction, the S26 Ultra can request rides, order food, or schedule services. Gemini now opens apps in virtual windows and navigates interfaces step by step, pausing only for confirmation.
The assistant behaves less like search and more like a human moving through screens.
This has consequences.
If assistants complete tasks on behalf of users, carefully designed app interfaces — promotions, subscriptions, nudges — become secondary. The benefit for users is clear. The long-term balance between platforms, developers, and AI remains unsettled.
The Future Is Assertive
Smartphones were once passive tools, waiting patiently for instructions.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra AI features suggest something different: devices that interpret context, filter interactions, generate content, and act autonomously.
Convenience rises. Complexity follows.
For now, the S26 Ultra offers a glimpse of what personal devices may become — not just responsive, but proactive. Not just smart, but willing to take initiative.
