Samsung CEO Says AI Must Understand Users Ahead of Galaxy Unpacked
By Sayed Abdullah | July 9, 2026
The invitation has gone out, and the date is set. Samsung will hold its next Galaxy Unpacked event on July 22 in London, streaming live to millions of viewers around the world. The tagline — "A New Shape Unfolds" — points clearly toward new foldable devices, likely the next Galaxy Z Fold models, and perhaps a new Watch lineup. But the company's president and CEO, TM Roh, is not spending his time talking about hinge mechanisms or screen resolutions. He is talking about understanding. "AI doesn't need to outthink you. It needs to understand you," Roh wrote in a statement ahead of the event. That sentence, simple as it sounds, is a strategic declaration. Samsung is betting that the next phase of artificial intelligence will not be won by the most powerful model in a data centre. It will be won by the AI that lives in your pocket, on your wrist, in your home. The AI that knows you.
For Samsung, that means foldables, watches, and appliances are not just hardware. They are entry points. And the company is positioning them as the most intimate layer of the AI ecosystem.
What Is Actually Going On
Roh's statement was a philosophical pitch wrapped in a product teaser. "AI no longer merely answers. It is entering an agentic age," he wrote, "taking action on our behalf while the person carries the final decision. But to act for someone, it must first know them." The language is careful. It positions Samsung's Galaxy AI not as a chatbot that responds to prompts, but as an invisible layer that works across phones, tablets, watches, televisions, and connected home devices. Each device, in Roh's framing, adds context. A watch knows your heart rate and your sleep patterns. A phone knows your schedule and your communication habits. A television knows your entertainment preferences. Together, they build a portrait of a person, and the AI that sits across all of them can act on that portrait in ways that a single device never could.
Foldable phones remain central to this vision for a practical reason. Larger flexible screens give users more room for multitasking, editing, summarising, and working with AI tools on the go. Roh said foldables "open a larger stage," while stressing that newer models have become thinner, lighter, and more immersive. The July 22 event is expected to showcase the next generation of that hardware. But the hardware, Samsung seems to be saying, is no longer the story. The AI that runs on it is. And the AI will only be as good as the data it has about the person using it.
The privacy dimension is inseparable from this vision. Roh acknowledged as much, stating that users must remain in control as AI becomes more personal. Samsung Knox, the company's security platform, is designed to protect Galaxy devices and the connections between them. The promise is that Samsung can collect enough data to build a deeply personal AI without exposing that data to the cloud or to third parties. Whether that promise is kept will determine whether the public trusts the vision. The history of consumer technology is littered with companies that promised privacy and delivered surveillance. Samsung is asking for permission to know you. The question is whether you believe it will keep that knowledge to itself.
The Background You Need
Samsung's AI push is not happening in a vacuum. Apple has been integrating AI across its devices, Google has been doing the same with Android and Pixel, and OpenAI's GPT models are accessible on any device with a browser. What Samsung brings to the table is scale. It sells more phones than any other manufacturer. It has a presence in appliances, televisions, and wearables that no other AI company can match. If Galaxy AI can operate seamlessly across all those devices — pulling data from your refrigerator, your watch, your phone, and your TV — it will have a dataset that Apple and Google, for all their strengths, cannot replicate. That is the bet. And it is a bet that depends on foldables, because foldables are the devices that people use most intensively, for the longest periods, generating the richest data about their habits and preferences.
The timing of the July 22 event is also notable. It comes after Apple raised prices on iPads and MacBooks, citing the same memory chip costs driven by the AI boom. It comes after OpenAI's GPT-5.6 launch was delayed by the US government over national security concerns. The AI industry is simultaneously racing forward and hitting regulatory and economic friction. Samsung's pitch — that AI should understand you rather than outthink you — is a way of positioning itself on the consumer-friendly side of that friction. It is not asking to build a superintelligence. It is asking to build a more helpful phone. That is a safer message, and it is likely to resonate with users who are tired of hearing about the dangers of AI and just want a device that works better.
How This Affects You in Pakistan
In Pakistan, yaar, Samsung's foldables occupy a strange space in the market. They are aspirational devices — the kind that people stare at in shop windows on Tariq Road or in Centaurus Mall, the kind that cost more than most families spend on food in six months. A new Galaxy Z Fold can easily cross Rs. 300,000, and with the PTA registration tax adding another Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 50,000, the total cost can approach Rs. 350,000. That is not a phone for the mass market. It is a phone for professionals, business owners, and the small but growing segment of Pakistani consumers who are willing to pay a premium for the latest technology. For those buyers, Samsung's AI pitch matters. If the new foldables offer genuinely useful AI features — real-time translation during calls, intelligent summarisation of documents, proactive suggestions based on daily routines — they may justify the cost. If the AI is gimmicky, the foldables become just another expensive screen.
The broader implication of Samsung's strategy for Pakistan is about data. If Galaxy AI builds its understanding of users through their devices, the data it collects about Pakistani users — their commuting patterns, their spending habits, their health metrics — will be stored and processed somewhere. Samsung says Knox protects that data. But for Pakistani users, the question of where their data lives and who can access it is not trivial. The government has shown an increasing willingness to regulate digital spaces, from PTA taxes to SIM verification drives. If Samsung's AI becomes deeply integrated into Pakistani life, it will also become a repository of information that the state may eventually want to access. That is not a reason to avoid the technology. But it is a reason to ask the questions now, before the devices are in every pocket.
The July 22 event will be streamed live, and for Pakistani tech enthusiasts, it will be a late-afternoon affair — 6pm Pakistan time. The pre-orders will follow soon after, and the first wave of buyers will decide whether the AI features live up to the CEO's promises. Roh has said that the best AI experiences will come from the devices that know the user best. For Samsung, that means the phone in your hand. For Pakistani users, that means a device that costs a fortune and promises to make life easier. Whether it delivers is something no press release can answer. It will be answered in the daily use, the small frustrations, the moments when the AI gets it right and the moments when it gets it wrong. The CEO's statement was a vision. The product will be the test.
What Happens Next
Samsung will unveil its new devices on July 22, and the conversation will quickly shift from Roh's philosophy to the specifics of pricing, specifications, and availability. The success or failure of Galaxy AI will not be determined at the launch event. It will be determined in the months that follow, as users decide whether the AI features are worth the price of upgrading. The foldable market is still niche, and Samsung is still its dominant player. But the competition is intensifying. Google, Motorola, and Chinese manufacturers are all pushing their own foldable devices, and Apple is rumoured to be developing one. Samsung's advantage is its ecosystem — the phones, the watches, the earbuds, the televisions, the appliances. If Galaxy AI can tie all of those together, it will be difficult for competitors to match. But if the AI feels fragmented, if the privacy concerns outweigh the convenience, if the price remains out of reach for all but the wealthiest buyers, the vision that TM Roh described will remain just that. A vision. The devices will be real. The understanding he promised is still being built.
Would you trust an AI that knows your daily habits and routines, or does the privacy trade-off concern you? I would like to hear what Pakistani tech users think.
Sayed Abdullah is the founder and editor of Prime Pakistan. Based in Karachi, he writes about technology and how it impacts the everyday lives of Pakistani consumers. Read more.
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Sources
- Samsung Electronics — TM Roh's statement and Galaxy Unpacked invitation.
- Industry reports — Expectations for Galaxy Z Fold models and Galaxy Watch lineup.
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