Samsung will unveil its next flagship smartphone lineup on February 25 at its Galaxy Unpacked event in San Francisco. The company sent out invites earlier this week. The event will begin at 10 am Pacific (1 pm Eastern), and it’ll be livestreamed here.
Rumors abound that suggest the Galaxy S26 series—which will include the Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26+, and Galaxy S26 Ultra—won’t have any major changes from their predecessors. They’ll likely be powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, with some minor charging speed improvements and minor upgrades to the camera hardware.
Artificial intelligence features will likely sit at the forefront, likely with a few new Gemini tricks. However, one big new feature is a privacy screen built into the smartphone itself. It’ll let you selectively block parts of the display from people around you. Unfortunately, even with only minor upgrades, there may be a price increase for these phones stemming from the RAM shortage. As usual, Samsung is letting you reserve a Galaxy S26 device right now. You’ll get a $30 credit to use when preorders open up, and a chance to win a $5,000 gift card at Samsung.com.
Don’t expect to see a Galaxy S26 Edge. Samsung’s super-slim Edge phone from 2025 wasn’t a hit, and leaks suggest a successor has been canceled. Still, the Edge debuted in May 2025, so we could still see a follow-up around then. All we know is that it likely won’t make a showing at this Unpacked event. Samsung usually announces other products outside of smartphones, and this year, that may be a new pair of Galaxy Buds wireless earbuds.
We’ll be on the ground bringing the news to you live.
Fitbit’s Personal Health Coach Arrives on iOS
Months after Fitbit’s Personal Health Coach launched in public preview for Android users, the Gemini-powered health service is now finally available to iOS users. To try it out, you must have an active paid or trial Fitbit Premium subscription and a phone that runs iOS 16.4 or higher. (You can check out the full list of requirements here.) Personal Health Coach is also expanding to English speakers in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.
As I mentioned in my preview of the service, I would be wary of divulging too much personal health information to a large corporation, even one that promises not to use it for advertising. I also found that it’s easy to start consulting with the Coach for advice on every part of your day, which your IRL family and friends will find weird and annoying. However, it is the easiest, most helpful, and most accommodating of the AI coach services that I’ve tried so far, and $10/month for Fitbit Premium is cheaper than a real running coach. As always, your mileage (literally) may vary. —Adrienne So
iOS 26.3 Makes It Easy to Switch to Android
Apple released iOS 26.3 this week for the iPhone, and the hot new feature might surprise you. The company is making it easier to switch to Android phones, thanks to a collaboration with Google, which also recently added a similar feature for switching from Android to iPhone.
Now, you can place your Android device next to an iPhone to begin the transfer process, very much like how you switch between iPhones. Photos, texts, notes, apps, and even the phone number are transferred over. (Before, you needed to download specific apps to do this.)
iOS 26.3 also introduces a new privacy feature called Limit Precise Location, which limits “some information that cellular networks may use to determine your location.” Unfortunately, this feature is only available on Apple devices with Apple’s custom C1 or C1X modem: the iPhone Air, iPhone 16e, or iPad Pro M5 Wi-Fi + Cellular. You also need a supported carrier, and right now in the US, that’s Boost Mobile. Expect wider adoption later this year, especially with the iPhone 18 series, as Apple is expected to inject them with its very own C2 modem.
The Android 17 Beta That Never Was
Gear Roundup
All the top gear news of the week in one place. Here’s more you may have missed this week:
Ferrari’s New Jony Ive–Designed EV Is Swathed in Glass and AluminumWaymo Asks the DC Public to Pressure Their City OfficialsAlexa+ Can Now Analyze Your Kindle Scribe Notes
Google was supposed to launch the Android 17 beta—the next version of its mobile operating system—this week, but the company pulled the release without explanation. This launch marks a change, as Google typically releases developer betas first, then debuts public betas that everyone can join to test the software. But last year, Google introduced the “Android Canary” release channel to replace developer betas, giving devs faster access to test experimental features and platform changes.
Google says the public beta is “coming soon,” so when it does finally arrive (for Pixel phones first), what can you expect? There’s a mandatory requirement that apps must support resizing and windowed multi-tasking modes to improve the Android experience on larger screens (Aluminium OS, anyone?).
Outside of performance improvements, there’s a new application programming interface (API) that allows apps to access metadata from all the camera sensors, so hopefully, there’s less lag and stuttering when you launch the camera through a third-party app like Instagram. There’s also a new API that levels out audio across your apps. If you switch between apps and find that YouTube is playing much louder than Instagram, this API would mean the audio will be adjusted so they’re at the same loudness, provided developers take advantage.
Android 17 isn’t groundbreaking, but that’s in line with what Google has said as the company plans to deliver more frequent updates instead of one big update every year. As the beta progresses, expect to see more new features. It’s hard to say when the final version will be available, but it’ll likely land around the start of summer.
YouTube Arrives on the Apple Vision Pro
Two years after the Apple Vision Pro entered the market, the YouTube app is finally available on visionOS. That means you can watch standard 2D videos on a theaterlike screen in a virtual space, but you can also watch 3D, 180- or 360-degree videos and enjoy the more immersive experience in the “Spatial” tab. Up until now, AVP owners could only watch YouTube via the Safari browser on visionOS.
Google specifically did not launch any of its apps on Apple’s visionOS platform, likely because it has been preparing these services for its own competing Android XR platform. With the first Android XR headset already out—the Samsung Galaxy XR—it’s possible that Google will gradually roll out its apps on visionOS.
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