Ordering food or hailing a car, Google’s Gemini will soon be able to take care of tasks involving multiple steps on your phone. Sameer Samat, Google’s president of Android, spoke about it during a brief appearance at Samsung’s launch programme for the Galaxy S26 series in San Francisco.
He spoke about “moving from an operating system to an intelligent system”, and that is exactly what you get on Samsung’s latest phones, which offer the early steps of agentic AI.
With the technology, users of Galaxy S26 phones will be able to order food or hail a ride. The potential is limitless. In some ways, it is reminiscent of what Apple had promised for Siri at the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference, though those plans were later delayed.
Take the case of a family group chat where everyone wants pizza. Ask Gemini to look at the chat thread and figure out what to order. Let Gemini place the order with a delivery app. The user remains in full control of the process, as they still need to instruct Gemini to complete the order by naming a specific pizzeria.
You may say the situation is a simple one and that it would have been just as easy to order through a delivery app or by calling the pizzeria directly. Still, one cannot deny that this could be a significant moment for agentic AI.
Google recently added the ability for Gemini to auto-browse for users in Chrome, and being able to do something similar directly within Android feels like a logical next step.
Apple, too, is working on a number of features, and it is only a matter of time before they are showcased. There are reports that this year’s WWDC could prove to be a turning point for Siri.
Apple has already announced that it will use Google’s Gemini AI model to power a more personalised Siri later this year. “After careful evaluation, Apple determined that Google’s AI technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users,” the companies announced in January.
Another interesting feature showcased at the Samsung event was an update to Circle to Search. The feature allows you to carry out a Google Search from almost anywhere on your phone.
So far, the tool’s underlying AI system was limited to searching for a single object within an image. Now, thanks to Gemini 3, it can scan and identify multiple objects at the same time. For example, if you like an outfit worn by a Bollywood star, the updated tool will attempt to find matches for each item they are wearing, including shoes and accessories. Google has also made it easier to see how those clothes might look on you by integrating its virtual try-on feature directly into Circle to Search.
The other major announcement from Samsung concerns the hardware on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. It features the company’s Privacy Display technology, designed to make it harder for people sitting next to you to see what is on your screen.