Google chose Samsung’s stage, not its own, to ship the first working pieces of Gemini Intelligence. At Galaxy Unpacked in London on July 22, the company announced three Gemini updates landing on the new Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Fold8, and Flip8 — and described them as the opening installment of “our vision for technology that works proactively for you.”
That framing matters more than any single feature. Gemini Intelligence is Google’s name for the proactive layer it has been teasing since it introduced a task-automation beta in February, and the fact that it debuts on Samsung’s new foldables — not a Pixel — says a lot about how Google intends to distribute its AI: through the Android partner with the largest premium install base, timed to that partner’s biggest hardware moment of the year.
Task automation grows from a beta into a system feature
The February beta let Gemini handle a handful of delegated chores — ordering a rideshare, getting takeout delivered. As of this week, task automation supports more than 40 popular apps, covering shopping, dinner reservations, travel booking, and event tickets. Gemini executes multi-step tasks in the background while you use other apps or close the phone entirely, shows step-by-step progress on screen, and is designed to stop for your review and final confirmation before anything is committed.
Two details stand out in Google’s description. You can interrupt a running task, handle one detail yourself, and hand control back — a mid-task handoff that most agent demos conspicuously avoid. And Gemini can now use what Google calls advanced reasoning to parse complex images as prompts: show it a photographed shopping list or an inspiration photo and it treats that as the instruction. On the Flip8, the whole flow is reachable from the cover screen by long-pressing the power button, without opening the phone.
The footnotes carry the usual caveats: availability varies by country and language, users must be 18 or over, and some features run through the Gemini app rather than system-wide. The proactive future arrives market by market.
NotebookLM becomes Gemini Notebook — and ships preinstalled
Google is also renaming NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook and preinstalling it on Samsung’s new foldables. On the Z Fold8’s inner display it runs as a side-by-side workspace where you drag in documents, photos, whiteboard shots, and voice recordings, then either interrogate the sources in chat or generate study material from them — slide decks, videos, flash cards, quizzes, or a podcast.
Every Z Fold8 Ultra, Fold8, and Flip8 includes a six-month trial of Google AI Pro, which unlocks the heavier Notebook features like Audio Overviews and Video Overviews. That bundling is the commercially interesting part: Google is using Samsung’s hardware launch to seed a paid subscription, the same play Microsoft runs with Copilot and new PCs.
Watches now, glasses this fall
The third update stretches Gemini beyond the phone. On the new Galaxy Watch 9, raising your wrist activates Gemini with no wake word — ask a question and go. And Google confirmed that the intelligent eyewear it announced with Samsung at I/O 2026 is still on track to launch this fall, revealing two additional frame designs beyond the Gentle Monster and Warby Parker models already shown. If you wear a compatible Wear OS watch, a hand gesture will control the glasses — a pairing of the two wearables that neither device could pull off alone.
Samsung’s own Unpacked first-look leans hard on the same AI story, which is the real takeaway from London: the deepest Google-Samsung integration to date is now the headline feature of Samsung’s flagship hardware, and Gemini Intelligence — not any hinge or spec — is what both companies are selling. Google says more proactive features will roll out “as they are ready.” The February beta took five months to become a 40-app system feature; the fall eyewear launch is the next proof point to watch.
