Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip 6, Watch Ultra and the new Ring are Samsung’s AI operators

Samsung, like every major tech company on the planet, held its Galaxy Unpacked event with a focus on its own artificial intelligence offering, Galaxy AI. There were foldable phones, sure, but “Life opens up with Galaxy AI” was the event’s first selling point. The “next frontier of mobile AI” is here, Samsung claimed, with “cross-device intelligence.” But, in familiar tones, the company said its AI will be personalized for users, good for humanity, and empowering for creators.

But, of course, the latest foldables, wearables, and an all-new Galaxy Ring are “the ultimate way to experience Galaxy AI.”

Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch Ultra

In a bid to put its Galaxy AI on your wrist and fingers, Samsung has announced a seventh version of its Galaxy Watch, a larger, rugged Galaxy Watch Ultra, and the first version of a Galaxy Ring.

The Galaxy Ring ($400), at 7mm wide and 2.6mm thick and weighing between 2.3g and 3g, rivals the Oura Ring. Samsung offers a sizing kit for its ring, which seems sensible given the category’s size difference from standard rings and the likelihood of exercising while wearing it.

The Galaxy Ring tracks heart rate, skin temperature, sleep, and general activity, along with all the AI-powered wellness features Samsung has coming up with, like “energy score” and “wellness tips.” As you might imagine, the Galaxy Ring is exclusive to Android, and offers a better experience when paired with a Galaxy phone. You can, for example, use a “double-pinch” gesture to activate certain features. Yes, this already happens on the Apple Watch and iPhone, but hey, old habits die hard.

The Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra bear a striking similarity to their inspirations: the Apple Watch Ultra and the previous Galaxy Watch, respectively.

The Ultra model features 10 ATM water resistance, an IP68 rating, a titanium case, and plenty of familiar “orange means outdoors” colors. The orange “Quick Button” lets you access the flashlight, swim mode, or other features. There are power-saving modes that can give you 100 hours of battery life or up to 48 hours of continuous exercise tracking. There’s an emergency siren that can sound 85 db from the watch, which will be fun for anyone who accidentally discovers it.

The Galaxy Watch 7 looks a lot like its predecessor. It and the Ultra both come with Wear OS 5 and One UI 6, a new 3nm Exynos W1000 chip, 2GB of memory, and 32GB of storage.

They both also feature heart and body composition sensors and new LED colors that measure more things. One of those is “Advanced Glycation End Products,” which Samsung says can help its AI suggest diet and lifestyle changes (and which Samsung is specifically not The biggest new feature on both watches is sleep apnea detection, a first for modern wearables and FDA-approved, at least as something safe to consider, if not as a guaranteed indicator.

Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip 6

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 ($1,900) and Z Flip 6 ($1,100) get the same upgrades as their previous models. There’s a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip inside. The foldable glass on both is supposedly tougher and is now rated IP48, meaning dust resistance has gone from “X” (good luck) to “4” (particles 1mm and up), which is still unfortunate at these prices, but that’s life on the foldable edge.

The Z Fold 6’s outer display is slightly larger (6.2 to 6.3 inches), though it has the same inner display. Its cameras are much the same (50-megapixel main, 10-megapixel telephoto, 12-megapixel ultrawide), though the ultrawide claims better low-light performance.

The most notable upgrade on the Z Flip 6 is its 4,000mAh battery and a vapor cooling chamber inside. The base model gets 12GB of RAM instead of 8GB and 512GB of storage instead of 256GB on the base model.

Galaxy AI is here, even if you didn’t invite it

Samsung announced a few other products today that aren’t mentioned here, including its Galaxy Buds3 and Buds3 Pro, which are wireless earbuds that will remind you of some other very popular wireless earbuds. What Samsung really had to say today was that its own Galaxy AI is the connective tissue between all of these products.

The Fold and Flip’s screens are great for circling objects to find them. Cameras can zoom in automatically, notes can be summarized, and translations, in particular, are ubiquitous. Watches and rings can track your health and suggest ways to improve it in all sorts of ways that deserve a lot of disclosure about where all that data is going. Rick Osterloh, Google’s head of devices and services, came along to give Samsung’s efforts a sort of Gemini blessing.

Samsung seems to be the tech company that has been the least forthcoming about the origins, workings, and details of its AI platform. Its Galaxy AI page offers only three vague sentences about the distinction between on-device and cloud-based AI processing, with one stating: “Most other features that require a network connection use the cloud in some way.”

The most helpful and straightforward aspect of AI is this item in the Galaxy AI FAQ: “Can I turn off AI features?” Samsung says you can choose to turn AI off or make it available only on the device, and that there’s a “master switch” for cloud-based AI processing in Settings. It’s a reasonable thing for a company to offer you after you’ve handed over hundreds or thousands of dollars, and you might like them to work out their policies and strategies a bit first.