Gemini AI Agents Hit Pixel 10 and Galaxy S26

Gemini's AI on phones can order food and hail rides—no hands required.

Google and Samsung are pushing a new era of on-device AI that promises to juggle multi-step tasks across busy days, starting with the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S26. In a demo that sounded straight out of a sci-fi lunch rush, Sameer Samat, Google’s president of Android, showed Gemini orchestr taking a pizza-order from a chaotic family group chat and sending a driver-ride to the door with a few spoken prompts. The pitch is clear: your phone can handle planning and execution across apps and messages without you stitching every step together yourself. It’s positioned as a natural upgrade over the “smart assistant” you’ve grown tired of, with a focus on agentic capabilities—agents that can plan, decide, and act inside a chain of tasks.

But that promise sits against two practical backdrops. First, the Apple side of the story—largely framed in the context of WWDC 2024 promises—has hit delays. Apple unveiled ambitious Siri enhancements that were supposed to arrive earlier, but as of March 2025, those features have not materialized in a consumer-ready form. The Verge’s coverage makes the contrast plain: Google and Samsung offer a concrete, hands-on demo and a tight device lineup, while Apple’ s most anticipated features remain in the pipeline. In other words, the race to embedded AI that can execute on your behalf is no longer theory; it’s a live feature-set that is about to ship to millions of Android users.

The practical upshot for real-world buyers is nuanced. Gemini’s agentic approach could trim the friction of everyday tasks—especially when multiple apps and services must be coordinated in succession. But the devil is in the details: how robust is the planning, how reliably does it interpret a group chat, and how fast does it complete tasks when Wi-Fi and cellular connections are imperfect? The Verge notes the onstage performance, but the real test will come in homes with pets, kids, and the kind of chaotic message threads that AI promises to tame.

From a practitioner standpoint, there are several realities to watch. First, the reliability hurdle: agentic tasks require steady connectivity and strong app integrations. If the system can’t access a payment app, a ride-hailing service, or a restaurant’s ordering flow in the moment, the promise collapses into a partial automation that your phone still can’t manage. Second, privacy and data handling: coordinating a dinner order often means parsing group chats and personal preferences. The industry-wide tension between convenience and data exposure could shape how aggressively OEMs push background AI tasks. Third, ecosystem and app support: success hinges on broad, sustained partner integration. If only a sliver of apps cooperate, the value is capped. Fourth, pricing and maintenance: Google and Samsung have not disclosed any separate subscription price for Gemini features; the value proposition, at least initially, seems to ride on device purchase rather than a monthly fee. In other words, the “total cost” for most users is the price of a Pixel 10 or Galaxy S26, with no transparent AI add-on price announced yet.

Industry watchers will also consider the broader strategic angle. This is part of a hardware-embedded AI arms race: software tricks that rely on a tight hardware-software loop to deliver frictionless automation. If Gemini proves reliable, it could become a meaningful differentiator for Android flagships, pushing Apple to accelerate its own roadmap. But the flip side is risk—early-stage AI in daily life can produce surprising misfires if it misreads intent or steps into sensitive data without proper guardrails.

Verdict: wait for real-world testing and pricing clarity. If you’re already eyeing the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, or Galaxy S26 anyway, Gemini’s agentic features could be a compelling add-on. But upgrading solely for these capabilities—before hands-on assessments and clear cost details—feels premature.

Sources

Google and Samsung just launched the AI features Apple couldn’t with Siri