Samsung Electronics on Tuesday held its Galaxy Unpacked 2026 event at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and unveiled its third-generation AI phone, the Galaxy S26 series.

The Galaxy S26 series consists of 3 models: the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Galaxy S26+ and Galaxy S26. It offers upgraded hardware and cameras from the previous model, as well as more intuitive Galaxy AI.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra includes a Privacy Display that can limit what is visible from the side, the first such feature on a mobile phone, strengthening privacy protection.

Tae-moon Roh (노태문), head of Samsung Electronics' DX division and CEO, said Samsung has advanced mobile experiences so more people can feel the usefulness of AI in everyday life, leading the mass adoption of AI experiences. He said the Galaxy S26 series is based on powerful hardware and makes it easy and intuitive for anyone to use AI.

According to the company, the Galaxy S26 Ultra uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, a Galaxy-dedicated processor. Compared with its predecessor, NPU performance improves by 39%, while CPU and GPU performance rise by up to 19% and 24%, respectively, delivering its most powerful hardware performance and capabilities yet.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra includes a Vapor Chamber designed with a new structure, keeping performance stable even when using multiple apps or filming high-resolution video. It supports Super Fast Charging 3.0, which charges up to 75% in 30 minutes.

The Galaxy S26 series includes Samsung's image-quality improvement solution, mDNIe (mobile Digital Natural Image engine), enabling more delicate and realistic color reproduction on the display.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra and Galaxy S26+ apply ProScaler, an AI-based image processing feature, to render a range of content more clearly. It supports the APV (Advanced Professional Video) codec for professional video production, enabling users to shoot high-quality, professional-grade video and maintain high-definition quality even after multiple edits.

Super Steady, a video stabilisation feature, adds a new horizon lock option to support stable framing while moving or in shaky situations. The AI ISP (AI Image Signal Processor) is applied to the front camera to capture fine details such as hair and eyebrows and to render natural skin tones in selfies.

The upgraded Photo Assist strengthens editing functions through AI and supports edits by entering text describing what to change. Creative Studio lets users create various types of works by entering a sketch, image or text. Users can make stickers based on generated creations or use templates to turn them into polished content such as invitations and wallpapers.

The Galaxy S26 series also supports an AI-based Document Scanner. It cleanly removes elements such as wrinkles and fingers from photographed receipts, documents and notes to produce a polished scan file. When shooting multiple pages, it automatically creates a single PDF file.

The Galaxy S26 series supports personalised Galaxy AI that goes beyond responding to user requests by understanding user context and intent and reacting proactively. The newly added Now Nudge provides personalised suggestions. For example, if a friend requests recent travel photos via a messenger, Galaxy AI suggests on-screen that the user can quickly find and share relevant photos through a rounded-corner pop-up icon in the form of a nudge.

The upgraded Circle to Search recognises multiple elements within a circle drawn by the user at once and provides search results.

Samsung has installed multiple agents to strengthen the Galaxy S26 series AI experience.

Bixby is upgraded into a more powerful conversational device agent. Users can change smartphone settings they need through natural-language conversations with Bixby. In addition to Bixby, users can select agents such as Gemini and Perplexity in the settings menu and can call an AI agent by pressing the side button or using voice commands.

The Galaxy S26 series also supports Privacy Alerts, a machine-learning-based function that detects in advance when an app with device administrator privileges attempts unnecessary access to sensitive information such as location data, call records and contacts, and notifies users in real time.

The newly added AI-based Call Screening answers calls from unknown numbers on the user's behalf and provides a brief summary of the caller information and content the other party told the AI.

Samsung will roll out the Galaxy S26 series sequentially from March 11 in more than 120 countries worldwide, including South Korea, the United States, Britain, India and Vietnam.

Domestic pre-orders run for 7 days from Feb. 27 to March 5. The Galaxy S26 series launches in 4 colours: Cobalt Violet, White, Black and Sky Blue. It also comes in Pink Gold and Silver Shadow, exclusive colours available only through Samsung.com and Samsung Gangnam.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra comes in models with 12GB memory and 256GB or 512GB storage and a model with 16GB memory and 1TB storage, priced at 1,797,400 won, 2,050,400 won and 2,545,400 won, respectively. The Galaxy S26+ costs 1,452,000 won for the 12GB memory and 256GB storage model and 1,705,000 won for the 512GB storage model. The Galaxy S26 costs 1,254,000 won for the 12GB memory and 256GB storage model and 1,507,000 won for the 512GB storage model.