Samsung Electronics plans to invest KRW 110 trillion, or approximately $73 billion, in research and development and facilities "in a bid to lead the semiconductor industry in artificial intelligence". This year's plan would represent an increase in expenditure of over 21% compared to 2025.
Virtual Aperture already works on the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra via the Expert RAW app, but only for the main camera. Having it available for the telephoto as well would obviously improve its usability.
Samsung still hasn't fully revealed when it's unveiling the Galaxy S26 family, but it recently went 99% of the way in the Terms and Conditions of a contest it's hosting. So the rumored date of February 25 is pretty much a given at this point. Ahead of that, the company's US arm has started a teaser campaign of sorts, by sharing the meme you can see below.
Apple is widely rumored to be introducing variable aperture on the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max later this year, and Samsung is apparently paying very close attention to iPhone-related rumors. That's because the Korean company is now said to be considering re-adding the feature to its lineup as well. The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S10 both had variable aperture main cameras, but the feature was dropped with the Galaxy S20 generation in 2020.
This year the vanilla Samsung Galaxy S26 has a base storage of 256GB, while the S25 started at 128GB. Even so, the price of a 256GB S26 went up a tick because of the memory situation mentioned above. The Galaxy S26+ already had 256GB as base, but that costs more this year as well.