Galaxy Unpacked 2026: Event highlights

Here’s a look at everything the company announced at the event, and why you should be interested!

At Galaxy Unpacked 2026: A closer look

Right on cue, Samsung unveiled three flagships – the Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra. – continuing the now-familiar three-tiered strategy to its flagship lineup. The S26 and S26+ are Exynos 2600-powered in Indian models, with modest battery bumps, and incremental camera and display refinements – a slightly larger 6.3-inch display on the S26, while the S25+ still has a 6.7-inch. Classic polish rather than reinvention. Not to say performance boosts aren’t there, with a CPU that’s up to 19% faster, a GPU that’s up to 24% faster, and an NPU (neural processing unit for AI and machine learning) that’s up to 39% faster. Coupled this with a redesigned vapor chamber that the company claims dissipates more heat, and the phones should throttle less under sustained load too.

The S26 Ultra remains the halo device, with a 6.9-inch QHD+ display, a top-tier Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, and a now-familiar 200 MP main camera setup, now with brighter apertures for better low-light capture. Charging speeds tick up on the Ultra to 60W, battery holds steady at around 5,000 mAh, and S-Pen support remains intact. There are a few new camera tricks such as horizon lock that keeps the horizon level when you’re following a person or a pet, and ProScaler image upscaling and an MDNIe chip come together to improve color precision. Other than that, if any of this sounds predictable, it sort of is, but the company’s real pitch this year isn’t specs, it’s intelligence layered across the experience.

AI helps you take better pictures and videos in all lighting conditionsAI on Galaxy Phones: from Features to Autonomy

Samsung has been championing Galaxy AI since the S24 series, but this year, the focus has been on (no surprise) – autonomous agents. Agentic AI – AI assistants that don’t just respond to queries, but act on tasks. At Unpacked, Google previewed a new Gemini experience on Galaxy phones that can understand and evaluate context across apps and perform tasks like booking rides or placing food orders from chat conversations. Arriving in beta on the S26 series first, the Gemini app will handle such multi-step tasks in the background and initially only work with certain food, grocery or rideshare apps. Elsewhere, the company is also hedging its bets on the AI assistant wars, and the S26 devices ship with three built-in assistants – Bixby, Gemini, and Perplexity – each integrated into system tasks like search, note-taking, and reminders. Circle to Search just went fully multimodal, letting you “find the look” from scenes on the screen – identify the individual items highlighted and allow users to try them on virtually. Even the existing Galaxy/Google AI tricks got smarter, with generative photo editing, contextual nudges (“Now Nudge”), AI-assisted productivity workflows, so that your smartphone isn’t just smart, it’s anticipatory.

The display can be shielded from onlookers using innovative techPrivacy Display: Genuinely Clever

The standout feature from Unpacked wasn’t an extra camera or a dedicated chip – it was a display that finally understood the concept of personal space. The new Privacy Display hardware+software feature on the S26 Ultra selectively obscures on-screen content from side angles, either automatically or per-app. It works by dimming pixels on the sides of the screen and boosting them in the center, with the result that for anyone looking the screen other than a mostly face-on angle, the screen appears black and unusable. But this isn’t just for a single app – notifications, passwords, or entire screens can be shielded from wandering eyes on planes, trains, or cafés. And unlike old-school privacy screen protectors that dim everything, this is software-controlled and toggleable – full brightness when you want it, super secretive when you don’t. Sold!

Prices start from ₹87,999 for the base 12GB/256GB model and ₹1,19,999 for the Plus variant.

The all new Galaxy Buds 4 with better soundGalaxy Buds: Ergonomic Evolution

Audio got its moment too, with the Galaxy Buds4 and Buds4 Pro stepping in as successors to the Buds3 lineup. The standard Buds4 adopt an open-fit design, while the Pro model sticks with silicone-tip canal ergonomics and dual-driver audio. Both support Bluetooth 6.1 and introduce head-gesture controls – nod to accept calls, shake to reject – a small but delightfully sci-fi interaction shift.

The latest buds also claim improved audio quality and active noise cancellation (ANC), with an ambient sound mode, adaptive EQ and adaptive ANC…plus a new siren detection feature on the Buds 4 Pro that enables ambient sound to let you hear things like alarms or emergency vehicle warnings. Available for ₹22,999 (Buds 4 Pro) or at ₹16,999 (Buds 4) when they go on sale with the rest of the launches in March).