Samsung’s JB Park reveals the ‘secret sauce’ behind Galaxy S26: Why the new flagship is more Indian than you think

“Hardware is developed by our affiliates like Samsung Display Corporation that makes the panel. The memory, the chipset come from LSI, which is also affiliate of Samsung Electronics Group. These are the fundamental developments happening in our R&D centre in Korea. But you have to calibrate the device and the components to work seamlessly. Calibration is an
art of engineering. And that happens in India,” he told a select group of members of the Indian media.

JB Park is the President and CEO of Samsung Southwest Asia (SWA). (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

“There are components that are being conflicted in some of the operating system that we use from Android. And integrating that into component and making it best output is engineering that we call it, what we are good at India,” Park added.

Park said Samsung’s R&D center in Noida handles critical coding and configuration for over 129 countries, making it a global hub for localised settings, where Indian engineers handle frequency setups, feature customisation, and telco collaboration for product launches.

“I think the Noida R&D centre is the primary place that does configuration for all the localised global settings. From collaborating with the telcos for setting up the frequency to the product settings – all are being all done in Noida. So, I can say that the projects in Noida are very important. We just make the fundamental structure of the S-series or the A-series or
the foldables in Korea. But you will see a lot of value add that is done in Noida,” he said.

For Samsung Electronics, India is not only an important development hub for many of its products, including smartphones, but also one of its top markets. It is a massive market with an expanding middle class driving sales growth, particularly as the premium smartphone segment continues to boom, and it also serves as a large manufacturing base for millions of Samsung devices.

“We are only a Korean brand that is sticking to the fundamental of technology and innovation and that’s what we care about the consumers to bring the best value of the consumers,” Park responded when asked how the company is responding to the long-term strategy amid the rise in competition in the high-end smartphone segment.

Samsung’s new Galaxy S26 lineup, which includes the S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra, boasts an even larger suite of AI features than the previous two generations and introduces a new Privacy Shield mode that prevents bystanders from sneaking a peek at the display screen. The upgrades to the Galaxy S26 series, arriving in stores on March 11, will also include price increases for the base and mid-tier models, as well as for the Ultra device.

Park didn’t specify whether the price increase is directly linked to the global RAM shortage or if the company is charging more to consumers for the new AI features. However, analysts expect that due to the memory shortage, the average retail price of a smartphone could rise by as much as 14 per cent.

“Rising memory semiconductor prices are a global issue and impacting the broader industry. We expect to be relatively well-positioned on the supply side through strategic partnerships and will continue efforts to minimize the impact on our business by responding flexibly to market changes,” he added.

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series will be made in India. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

Samsung is doubling down on Galaxy AI, its suite of AI features and AI agents that take action on the user’s behalf within apps. During the event, Samsung demonstrated how its S26 became the first smartphone on which Google Gemini can autonomously operate third-party apps such as Uber on a user’s behalf. In fact, the company is bringing multiple AI systems into a single device: Google’s Gemini for agentic tasks like booking rides and acting across apps; Perplexity AI for web-based queries; and an upgraded version of Bixby as the conversational on-device assistant, now powered by a more capable in-house large language model.

It’s a multi-agent strategy that could help Samsung differentiate its smartphones from the competition and gain a leg up against Apple Inc., which is expected to power a revamped Siri on iPhones.

“Giving users the freedom to choose which agent they use is key to making Galaxy AI feel more personal and natural. This added autonomy helps deliver a more personalized and seamless AI experience on Galaxy S26.”

While the S26 series leans heavily on software, the hardware upgrades are relatively minor, setting the tone for the phones and influencing how the market responds to them. “You cannot have a 5 megapixel camera and expect the output to be a 100 megapixel or 200 megapixel performance. The hardware upgrade has to be accompanied by refining the finest output on camera result with the assistance of AI. That’s how you are going to integrate both software and hardware together. The hardware integration has to move on regardless of the AI functionality,” Park said.