Samsung’s Galaxy S26 AI camera features are a photography nightmare

In many ways, the new Samsung phones They are fairly normal upgrades. The S26 lines come with some useful new things – in particular Privacy screen on S26 Ultrawhich sounds like a really cool piece of technology and a really useful new feature — and a lot of frequent changes year after year. On the other hand, the new camera features are none of those things. They are something worse. Something even scarier.

on This episode of vertcastNilay and David discuss the new phones, then delve into the ways in which the S26’s AI camera features seem clearly designed to change the whole idea of ​​what happens when you try to take a photo. In this regard, it is not even clear that what you are taking is a “photo” anymore. We’ve been talking about, “What is an image?” The end of the world for a while, and the S26 feels like crossing the line. All in the service of some cake.

After that, the hosts resort to Big change within the Xbox team. With Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond out, and Asha Sharma in, it’s time to wonder what happened to the Xbox, and whether Sharma or someone can fix it. Problems with games from Microsoft It’s been around for years It is the result of a series of bad bets and bad decisions. What will it take to get back on track, and is “getting back on track” even possible anymore?

If you want to learn more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get started, first on new Samsung devices:

And in the lightning round: