intermediary

He Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 It is surely the most powerful processor that has ever come to an Android phone. Samsung has it in S26 Ultra. And in the launch communications of this mobile he has barely mentioned it, contrary to his modus operandi of yesteryear: the chip used to be one of the big arguments along with the camera and battery. What Samsung has developed with the S26with a lot of time and detail, has been AI. Specifically, the S26 will work with three: Gemini, Bixby and Perplexity. That you choose. That each one does different things. That the device is responsible for coordinating them between them. High-end hardware has reached a point where the differences are marginal for most users. Nobody buys an Ultra anymore because it has 20% more performance in the vapor chamber. But he can buy it because the phone asks him for the Uber only when he has an event on the calendar and calculates the times without him doing anything.to. Or because it filters the calls from spam (there will be trials for this), because it answers for you if you don’t want to pick up the phone, or because it suggests photos of the trip when a friend asks for them via chat. Samsung calls this ‘agentic upgrade’although what it describes is easier to understand: the mobile phone does things in the background without you asking it. There is the twist that the briefing already hinted. Samsung no longer sells itself as the maker of the best hardware. It is sold as the one that best connects you with the intelligence that others have built. It’s not Google, which has Gemini. It is not Perplexity, which has its search engine. It’s not even the chip, which is sometimes an Exynos but sometimes it’s from Qualcomm. Samsung is the layer that unites all thatthe operating system that decides how those agents talk to each other, the hardware that runs them. He is, in the most literal sense, an intermediary. And that’s where he’s focusing now. Perplexity in action, integrated into the S26. Image: Xataka. Galaxy AI. It is not its own AI but rather the integration of someone else’s. Image: Xataka. The bet makes sense as long as that role is difficult to replicate. One UI, Samsung DeXthe integration between native apps and Bixby, the brutal hardware privacy screen that only the Ultra has… All of these are things that you can’t have on another device even if you use the same AIs. For now, at least. The uncomfortable question is what happens when Gemini, Perplexity and Bixby are free on any Android. When what matters is not what AI you access, but how the manufacturer integrates it. Samsung is betting that this difference will be enough of a purchase argument. That’s why it doesn’t sell you the processor. You already assume it’s good. In Xataka | Samsung has a plan to become the greatest AI power in mobile phones. And that is why it has teamed up with Perplexity Featured image | Xataka