ByEwan Spence,
Senior Contributor.
Samsung is expected to debut the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the rest of the S26 family at a Galaxy Unpacked event in mid- to late-January 2026, with retail release two weeks after. We could see 2026’s leading flagship in a few weeks. Rather than buy a nearly year-old Galaxy S25 handset today, what benefits are there to waiting?
One of the biggest is to take full advantage of the rising capabilities of artificial intelligence to run locally on your smartphone. Assuming a linear increase in performance and potential, the time to process AI requests would be reduced. Yet the likes of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon or Samsung’s Exynos chipsets know they are being leaned on for AI-powered results, so you can expect even more optimisation of the silicon in addition to the general performance uplift.
There are also discussions of Samsung bringing Perplexity into Bixby and Galaxy AI. That's likely a software change, and while the South Korean company has been swift to bring new features to older models, it still takes some time.
