A major Pixel-exclusive security feature could be the Galaxy S26’s secret weapon

One of the best Pixel features is Scam Detection. Introduced with the Pixel 9 series, Scam Detection notifies users about potential scams as they occur. This is done for phone calls, text messages, and even chat apps. So far, Scam Detection has been a Pixel-only feature, but it seems the feature could finally be losing that exclusivity, potentially starting with the upcoming Galaxy S26 series.

Scam Detection is available on a variety of Pixel phones, but there’s a slight difference in how it is implemented across generations.

Pixel 9 series (excluding Pixel 9a) and Pixel 10 series in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, the UK, and the US get Scam Detection powered by on-device Gemini Nano via AI Core. Pixel 6 and later devices in the US also get Scam Detection, but it is powered by Google’s on-device machine learning models.

Within the Phone by Google app v206.0.857916353, we’ve spotted clues that indicate Google is working to bring Scam detection to the upcoming Galaxy S26 series, potentially making them the first non-Pixel phones to get the feature.

We spotted mentions of what appear to be model numbers for the Galaxy S26 series in the Google Dialer app.

Here, SM-S942 is expected to be the Galaxy S26, SM-S947 is expected to be the Galaxy S26 Plus, and SM-S948 is expected to be the Galaxy S26 Ultra. The model numbers are mentioned alongside the codenames of several Pixel devices, namely the Pixel 9 series (excluding Pixel 9a) and the Pixel 10 series.

The last line of the code snippet above mentions “Sharpie,” which is the codename for Scam Detection in the Google Phone app.

The Pixel phones mentioned use on-device Gemini Nano for Scam Detection, and there’s a chance the Galaxy S26 series could also do the same.

Will the Galaxy S26 series ship with the Google Phone app as the default dialer?

With all of this said, we have a peculiar problem: Samsung Galaxy phones do not ship with the Google Phone app. Instead, they use the Samsung Phone app as the pre-installed default dialer.

Users can download the Google Phone app from the Play Store and install it on their Galaxy phones and set it as the default dialer, but we’re unsure if doing so will grant it all the requisite permissions needed for Scam Detection to work, as it will be classified as a user app instead of a system app.

It remains to be seen if Samsung will preload the Google Phone app as the default dialer on the Galaxy S26 series and ditch the Samsung Phone app.

There’s precedence here, as the company ditched Samsung Messages in favor of Google Messages in 2024 to better support RCS features. Samsung Messages relied on carriers to support RCS, while Google Messages uses Google’s own Jibe servers, so this move made some sense. There’s no equivalent need for the dialer app, though, so there’s less incentive for Samsung to make the move — unless Google could be sweetening the deal, as it appears to be by allowing the Galaxy S26 series phones to be part of this exclusive club.

Neither Google nor Samsung has announced this feature or change, and it remains to be seen whether it makes it to market at all on the Galaxy S26 series. We’ll keep you updated when we learn more.