Samsung's New Galaxy Foldables Come With Gemini Notebook
The Neuron ● Covered by 2 sources
Samsung's new Galaxy foldables ship loaded with Google's AI, including a rebranded NotebookLM. Gemini can now book your dinner, shop for you, and even read your screen.
Google and Samsung just made their partnership look a lot less like a hardware deal and a lot more like a full software takeover. The new Galaxy Z Fold 8 series and Z Flip 8 arrive with Gemini baked in so deeply that the assistant can now peek at what's on your screen, parse complicated images, and act on your behalf across 40 apps — a jump from the handful Google allowed when task automation launched in beta back in February.
That automation push is the headline here. Google says Gemini can now shop, book dinner reservations, buy tickets, and arrange travel experiences without you touching each individual app. On the Z Flip 8, you don't even need to open the phone: a long press on the power button pulls up the Flex Window and lets Gemini get to work from there. Google didn't name which 40 apps made the cut, which is a little odd for a company usually eager to drop partner logos, but the ambition is clear enough.
The more interesting move, though, is NotebookLM's rebrand into Gemini Notebook, now preloaded on every one of these foldables. It's Google's research tool for turning a pile of scattered sources — YouTube videos, web pages, your own notes — into something usable: slide decks, flashcards, summary podcasts, or just a chat interface you can interrogate. Plan a trip to Portugal, feed it ten tabs and a rental confirmation, and it'll spit back an itinerary. Some of that horsepower sits behind a paywall, so Samsung is sweetening the deal with six months of Google AI Pro thrown in with the Fold 8 Ultra, Fold 8, and Flip 8.
Google didn't stop at phones. The Galaxy Watch 9 gets wrist-raise activation for Gemini, no tap required, and the companies teased two new frame styles for their Android XR glasses ahead of a fall launch. And in a quieter but genuinely useful update, Android 17 now includes a native iPhone-to-Android migration tool — no third-party app needed — that pulls over photos, messages, passwords, WiFi credentials, and even your eSIM. It's rolling out first to select Pixels and these new Samsung foldables before presumably going wider.
Taken together, this isn't really a phone launch anymore. It's Google using Samsung's hardware as the delivery vehicle for an AI stack it wants everywhere — your pocket, your wrist, and eventually your face.
My take
Rebranding NotebookLM into Gemini Notebook and preloading it on hardware tells you exactly what Google's strategy is: stop asking people to discover good AI tools and start forcing distribution through OEM deals. It works, but it also means Samsung phones are quietly becoming Google's testbed for how much agentic automation people will tolerate before they start asking who actually approved that dinner reservation.
Read more about this at: The Neuron
