Samsung loves to launch new features before Apple, and it has partly done so with the new AI capabilities in the Galaxy S26. The latest version of Galaxy AI seeks to perform many of the same functions as Apple Intelligence.
As our sister site 9to5Google notes, however, the experience seems set to prove very underwhelming …
One of the more amusing habits of tech companies is to use the phrase “features include,” and then list not examples but instead the entire set of capabilities. Google did this with the Magic Cue feature on the Pixel, and Will Sattelberg suggests Samsung is doing the same here.
Now Nudge is designed to give “timely and relevant suggestions” to “help users avoid distractions.” The example used here are photo recommendations, automatically prompted when someone you’re chatting with wants to see what happened on your last vacation. But that’s the only example given here, and if I’ve learned anything over the last few years of AI hype, typically the examples given are just about all these features are capable of.
Magic Cue is the perfect example: the demos shown on stage with Jimmy Fallon weren’t just scratching the surface — they were the entire feature set, designed to softly imply that more capability exists once the phone’s in your hand.
Another feature known as Now Brief appears to be adding a feature similar to Apple Intelligence notification summaries – and I honestly can’t think of a single example of this proving useful to me.
The brand says Now Brief is now “more proactive and personalized,” which could help improve an otherwise-lackluster tool first launched on the Galaxy S25. Once again, we’re short on details in terms of actual changes, though it apparently is capable of scraping notifications.
As Sattelberg concludes:
It feels like the features it’s using to promote its goals are underbaked takes on its rivals’ similarly-underbaked skillsets.
I wish I could say I’m expecting better from Apple, but my strong suspicion is the experience will be very similar to this.
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