- Samsung is “exploring” the potential of vibe encoding on its phones
- This follows its Unpacked where it debuted the S26 series “AI phones”
- Samsung made no direct promises, but sees the appeal of users coding and customizing their own apps and UX
Samsung recently launched the Galaxy S26 series of phones and made a point not to call them smartphones – they’re “AI phones” now. This certainly matched most of the upgrades to the devices that were AI software focused, like the new Now Nudge and expanded Audio Eraser tools, with the biggest hardware bump for the base models via the 39% improved NPU processing (the processor responsible for AI tasks on the device).
It also teased the debut of Perplexity on its phones, joining as an alternative to the Gemini assistant and teasing the possibility of other AI models getting the same treatment in the future. But one AI feature I didn’t hear mentioned once—despite being the current hot topic in the AI space—was vibe encoding, and when I asked Samsung if this feature might appear on their phones, Won-Joon Choi (Samsung’s head of mobile experience) told me it’s “something we’re looking into.”
As noted by Won-Joon Choi, the benefit of vibe coding on smartphones is that it opens up “the ability to customize your smartphone experience in new ways, not just your apps, but your UX.”
He added: “Right now we’re limited to ready-made tools, but with vibe coding, users can tweak their favorite apps or create something tailored to their needs. So vibe coding is very interesting and something we’re looking into.”
What is vibe coding?
Vibe Coding is the coding version of having an AI help you write, create a picture, or complete any other task. You say what you want to build – I wanted to make one that lets me watch regular YouTube videos but blocks shorts – and the AI will code it for you.
This is not new in the AI world. Coding assistance was one of the earliest uses for modern LLMs, but more recently dedicated vibe coding models have come on the scene. Much like how recent iterations of AI image and video tools have taken a giant leap forward, so have these coding tools.
Instead of just serving as another pair of eyes or an assistant to prepare some basic building blocks for an experienced coder to assemble, vibe coding software can help almost complete beginners build working apps.
Given Android’s open nature—something I’d just heard Won-Joon Choi and Samsung’s chief marketing officer Benjamin Braun celebrate in a panel after Unpacked—it’s very easy for users to install their own apps on their device compared to, say, Apple systems, which are more locked down. As such, a built-in vibe encoding tool feels like a no-brainer for Samsung.
Samsung seemed to agree, but as you might expect, it didn’t commit to saying for sure when or even if this feature will one day be built directly into its devices in some capacity.
That said, the idea seemed to at least interest Samsung’s head of mobile experience, and given the excitement vibe coding is generating in the coding space, I’m not surprised by his response. We’ll have to wait and see what Samsung has up its sleeve, but maybe this AI phone thing could be more exciting than I first thought.
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