Samsung and Qualcomm are extending their work beyond Galaxy smartphones to smartwatches, XR hardware, smart glasses and audio devices. At Snapdragon Summit 2026 in Maui, Qualcomm XR, wearables and Personal AI chief Ziad Asghar identified Samsung as a key partner in the company’s wider Personal AI strategy, according to ChosunBiz.
The premise is to keep the smartphone at the center of the ecosystem while using connected wearables to provide an AI agent with ongoing context. Rather than requiring users to explain each situation from scratch, the phone could draw on information gathered across devices.
- A smartwatch could contribute activity-related context.
- Smart glasses could identify objects in the user’s view.
- Headphones or other audio wearables could receive voice commands and capture relevant surrounding information.
Samsung already has several pieces of that ecosystem in place. The company showed Galaxy XR at MWC 2026 and has also presented smart glasses based on Android XR, Gemini and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 platform. Qualcomm had previously confirmed that Snapdragon platforms were arriving across Galaxy phones, Galaxy Watch models and Samsung smart glasses, broadening a relationship long associated with Galaxy S handsets and Snapdragon “for Galaxy” editions.
For Qualcomm, the push also extends Snapdragon’s role beyond a maturing smartphone market. Its Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 is part of that effort, bringing on-device AI processing and support for multimodal audio devices.
Qualcomm demonstrated glasses at the summit that could recognize objects and respond by voice using an AI model running locally, including without a cloud connection. Samsung is also working on a Galaxy Glasses generation designed to display information directly in the lens. No new Samsung Galaxy product was announced alongside the partnership update, leaving the timing and scope of any unified phone, watch, XR and glasses experience unconfirmed.
