Samsung Developing AI-Powered 'Vibe Coding' for Galaxy Phones

Samsung's head of mobile experience has confirmed the company is actively exploring "vibe coding" for Galaxy phones — a technology that could let ordinary users build custom apps simply by describing what they want in plain language. The announcement comes as AI-assisted code generation becomes one of the fastest-growing trends in technology, with the term itself becoming Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year for 2025.

The Announcement That Turned Heads

At the Galaxy S26 launch event in early March 2026, TechRadar asked Won-Joon Choi, the head of Samsung's mobile experience division, whether vibe coding might one day come to Galaxy phones. His answer was measured but unmistakably forward-looking: "Right now we're limited to premade tools, but with vibe coding, users could adjust their favorite apps or make something customized to their needs. So vibe coding is very interesting, and something we're looking into" [1].

Choi didn't commit to a launch timeline or specify which Galaxy models might receive the feature first. But the fact that Samsung's most senior mobile executive is publicly discussing the concept suggests that internal prototyping is already underway [2]. He framed the potential not just as app creation, but as a deeper rethinking of the smartphone experience itself — opening up the "possibility of customising your smartphone experience in new ways, not just your apps but your UX" [1].

Samsung's latest Galaxy S26 lineup was pointedly marketed not as "smartphones" but as "AI phones," with the majority of upgrades being AI software-focused, including a 39% improved NPU (neural processing unit) in the base models [3]. This hardware boost is precisely the kind of foundation that on-device vibe coding would require.

What Is Vibe Coding, and Why Does It Matter?

The term "vibe coding" was coined by Andrej Karpathy — a co-founder of OpenAI and former head of AI at Tesla — in a now-famous post on X on February 2, 2025. He described it as "fully giving in to the vibes, embracing exponentials, and forgetting that the code even exists" [4]. In practical terms, it means using natural language prompts to instruct an AI model to generate functional software, with the user iterating through conversation rather than writing code line by line.

The concept resonated so deeply that Merriam-Webster added it as a "slang & trending" term within weeks, and Collins English Dictionary named it the Word of the Year for 2025 [5]. What began as a niche developer workflow has rapidly become a mainstream cultural phenomenon.

Source: GDELT Project

Data as of Mar 9, 2026CSV

The adoption numbers are staggering. According to recent industry surveys, 92% of US developers now use AI coding tools on a daily basis, with 82% of global developers using them at least weekly [6]. Google disclosed in its Q1 2025 earnings call that more than 25% of Google's code is generated by AI, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed 30% of Microsoft's code is now AI-written [6]. Among Y Combinator's Winter 2025 startup cohort, 21% of companies reported codebases that are 91% or more AI-generated [6].

Nothing Got There First

Samsung is not entering uncharted territory. London-based smartphone maker Nothing launched its Playground platform in September 2025, becoming the first major phone manufacturer to ship an on-device vibe coding tool [7]. The platform lets users describe what they want — a flight tracker, a meeting countdown, a virtual pet — and the AI generates a functional mini-app or widget directly on the phone.

Nothing Playground is currently in beta and exclusive to the Nothing Phone (3), with plans to expand to other devices running Nothing OS 4.0 later in 2026 [8]. The platform supports three primary permissions — location, calendar (read-only), and contacts — enabling location-based reminders, meeting widgets, and one-tap contact tools [8]. A community sharing feature lets users distribute their AI-created apps to others, building a catalog of tools that may never appear on the Google Play Store [9].

Early reviews have been mixed but charmed. Android Authority's hands-on testing produced what the reviewer described as "a screaming tea timer" — functional but imperfect, highlighting both the promise and limitations of consumer-facing AI code generation [10]. The key insight from Nothing's experiment is that the technology works well enough to be useful, even if it's not yet polished enough to replace traditional app development.

Samsung's interest appears to have been catalyzed, at least in part, by Nothing's first-mover advantage. Digital Trends noted that Samsung "could let you build your own apps with AI on Galaxy phones" in a direct comparison piece following Nothing's launch [11]. For Samsung, with its 19% global smartphone market share and an installed base approaching 400 million Galaxy AI devices, the stakes — and the potential reach — are considerably larger [12].

The Promise: Democratizing Software

The bullish case for vibe coding on smartphones is compelling. Instead of being limited to whatever apps are available in the Play Store, users could generate precisely the tools they need. A small business owner could describe a custom inventory tracker. A student could build a study scheduler tailored to their course load. A parent could create a chore-tracking app for their household.

Research supports the productivity argument. Studies show a 26% improvement in overall work completion speed when using AI coding tools, with 51% faster task handling for routine development activities. For specific use cases like API integration and boilerplate code generation, time savings can reach 81% [6].

Source: Second Talent / CodeRabbit / IT Pro

Data as of Mar 9, 2026CSV

The smartphone context adds another dimension. On-device AI processing — which Samsung has invested heavily in through its Exynos and Snapdragon-powered NPUs — could enable vibe coding without requiring a constant cloud connection. Samsung's semiconductor division has made on-device AI a core pillar of its chip strategy, emphasizing reduced latency, enhanced privacy, and offline capability [13]. If vibe coding can run locally, it addresses one of the key concerns around cloud-dependent AI tools: data privacy.

The Risks: Security, Quality, and the 'Illusion of Correctness'

But the enthusiasm comes with significant caveats. AI-generated code has a well-documented security problem, and placing code generation tools in the hands of non-developers amplifies the risk.

A December 2025 analysis by CodeRabbit of 470 open-source GitHub pull requests found that AI-co-authored code contained approximately 1.7 times more "major" issues compared to human-written code, with security vulnerabilities appearing at 2.74 times the rate [14]. Across 80 coding tasks spanning four programming languages, only 55% of AI-generated code was determined to be secure [15].

The enterprise world is already feeling the impact. According to Cycode's 2026 State of Product Security report, AI-generated code is now the cause of one in five security breaches, with 69% of security leaders reporting they have found serious vulnerabilities in AI-generated code [15]. IT Pro has described AI-generated code as "fast becoming the biggest enterprise security risk," warning of an "illusion of correctness" where code that appears functional contains hidden flaws [16].

For a consumer feature on hundreds of millions of Galaxy phones, these risks take on a different character. Professional developers at least have the training to review AI output critically. A casual user building a personal finance tracker through vibe coding is unlikely to audit the generated code for SQL injection vulnerabilities or insecure data storage practices.

The Competitive Landscape

Samsung's exploration of vibe coding places it in a broader competitive context. The three major smartphone platforms — Samsung (Galaxy AI), Apple (Apple Intelligence), and Google (Gemini) — are all racing to define what AI means on a phone, but they're taking different paths.

Apple has prioritized privacy-first on-device processing for its Apple Intelligence features, but has focused on writing assistance, photo editing, and Siri improvements rather than code generation [17]. Google, which powers much of Samsung's own Galaxy AI through its Gemini models, has pushed aggressively into AI coding through tools like Gemini Code Assist, but primarily targets developers rather than consumers [18].

Samsung's multi-agent AI ecosystem approach — announced alongside the Galaxy S26 — gives the company flexibility. By allowing users to choose between AI assistants including Google's Gemini, Samsung's own models, and potentially others, the company has created an architecture that could support vibe coding from multiple AI providers [19]. This is strategically shrewd: rather than building a single in-house code generation model, Samsung could integrate best-in-class tools and let users pick.

What It Might Actually Look Like

Samsung hasn't released mockups or technical specifications for a vibe coding feature, but the contours of a plausible implementation are visible from existing Galaxy AI capabilities and Nothing's Playground.

A Samsung vibe coding tool would likely start with widget and mini-app creation — small, sandboxed utilities that can't access sensitive system functions. The user would describe their desired functionality in natural language, the AI would generate the code, and a preview would appear before the user commits to installing it. Permissions would be granular and limited, much like Nothing's approach.

The Galaxy S26's improved NPU provides the computational headroom for on-device inference, while Samsung's existing cloud AI infrastructure could handle more complex generation tasks. A hybrid approach — generating simple utilities on-device while offloading ambitious projects to the cloud — would balance capability with privacy.

The Workforce Question

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (CES5051200001)

Data as of Mar 9, 2026CSV

The broader implications extend beyond consumer convenience. The computer systems design sector — which encompasses much of the professional software development workforce — has seen employment decline from a peak of approximately 456,000 in November 2022 to 344,000 in February 2026, a drop of nearly 25% [20]. While multiple factors drive this trend, including post-pandemic normalization and economic cycles, the rise of AI coding tools is widely cited as an accelerating factor.

If vibe coding matures to the point where it can handle a meaningful portion of simple app development, the downstream effects on the developer ecosystem could be significant. The January 2026 paper "Vibe Coding Kills Open Source" argued that the practice threatens the open-source software ecosystem by reducing the incentive and ability for developers to contribute meaningfully reviewed code [5].

Yet others see opportunity rather than threat. The "Vibe Coding Revolution" thesis holds that 2026 belongs to "orchestrators" — people who may not write code but can effectively direct AI to build what they imagine [21]. In this framing, Samsung's potential feature isn't replacing developers; it's creating a new category of digitally empowered users.

The Road Ahead

Samsung's public acknowledgment of vibe coding as a strategic interest marks a significant moment. This is not a startup experimenting at the margins — it's the world's largest smartphone manufacturer signaling that the boundary between "using" a phone and "programming" a phone may soon dissolve.

The challenges are real: security vulnerabilities in AI-generated code, quality control without expert oversight, potential liability issues when user-generated apps malfunction, and the sheer complexity of building a consumer-friendly interface for what is fundamentally a developer tool.

But Samsung has a track record of taking nascent technologies — large foldable screens, on-device AI translation, multi-agent AI ecosystems — and scaling them to mass market viability. If any company has the installed base, the hardware capability, and the AI partnerships to make vibe coding work on a phone, it's Samsung.

The question is no longer whether vibe coding will come to smartphones. It's whether Samsung will lead the charge or be forced to follow.