Samsung’s most recent Galaxy Unpacked event was as much a showcase for Galaxy AI as it was the Samsung Galaxy S24 line. Sure, at the time, the company’s new AI features were announced as exclusive to the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus and Galaxy S24 Ultra, but just a few months later, these very same features became available to download on Samsung’s 2023 and 2022 flagships.
This is by no means a criticism (quite the opposite – good on Samsung for not limiting Galaxy AI compatibility to the best Samsung phones!). But the rapid expansion of Galaxy AI in the months following Unpacked does reframe the company’s January event as a WWDC-style software launch, rather than a dedicated showcase for the Galaxy S24 line.
I say this to dissuade Samsung fans from expecting Samsung’s next Unpacked event – which is confirmed to take place on July 10 – to play as some sort of grandiose response to WWDC 2024 and, specifically, Apple Intelligence.
If anything, the latter represented a riposte on Apple’s part to Samsung’s event, with the Cupertino giant keen to prove that it, too, will soon be offering a host of useful AI features in its best iPhones.
Samsung stole a march on Apple by unveiling its Galaxy AI suite first, so it’s safe to expect the company’s next Unpacked event to be a more traditional, hardware-heavy showcase for the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Galaxy Z Flip 6, Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Ring.
Mind you, that’s not to say that AI will be out of the picture completely.
Growing the Galaxy
Given that millions of smartphone users already have access to Galaxy AI, it’s likely that Samsung will use the opportunity of its next Unpacked event to tease yet more Galaxy AI features.
We’ve already heard, for instance, that Samsung could debut a new generative AI-powered video editing tool – or, at the very least, some form of AI-powered video shooting assistance – at its upcoming foldable launch, as well as an Apple Intelligence-like drawing feature that lets you turn doodles and rough sketches into more polished images.
In its current form, Galaxy AI does include some video-focused features – Generative Edit, for instance, lets you resize, remove or reposition objects in an image, while Instant Slow-Mo uses AI to turn almost any regular video into a slow-motion video – but Samsung doesn’t yet offer a way to retroactively edit the composition of videos. As such, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the company debut one or multiple generative AI video features at Unpacked in July, just as that aforementioned drawing feature would make perfect sense for the S Pen stylus.
It’s not yet clear whether either feature will be available on all Galaxy AI-compatible Samsung phones at launch, though we think it’s likely that they begin as timed exclusive features for the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy S24 series, before being rolled out to older Samsung phones at a later date à la Circle to Search.
As for other new AI features, both the Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Ring will surely play host to some as-yet-unannounced AI smarts (AI-generated workouts, perhaps?), while we could also see Samsung talking more about the integration of Google Gemini in its new and upcoming smartphones (bearing in mind that Apple has now confirmed its partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI).
In summary, then, Samsung’s upcoming Unpacked showcase won’t be dominated by AI in quite the same way as WWDC 2024 or its own Galaxy S24 launch, but we’ll almost certainly see new AI features unveiled as a means of drumming up excitement for the Galaxy Z Fold 6, Galaxy Z Flip 6, Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Ring.
TechRadar will be on the ground in Paris to bring you all the announcements as they happen, so check back on July 10 for our up-to-the-minute reporting.