A man holding the Pixel 10 Pro and Galaxy S25. | Image by PhoneArena.
While almost everything major is already known about all the variants of the Galaxy S26 series, some last-minute leaks are revealing a few minor details about the upcoming phones. We recently reported that the privacy display feature will remain exclusive to the S26 Ultra. Now, a new report suggests that the entire lineup is not going to come with an important security feature.
Forget your Samsung phone if it gets stolen
It doesn't matter how carefully you're guarding your smartphone, if luck isn't on your side, a thief will still find a way to steal it from you. Fortunately, there are services like Google Find Hub that could allow you to locate your smartphone in such a situation.
For reference, when your Android phone gets stolen, you can see its approximate location by logging into your Find Hub account on any other device. What basically happens behind the scenes is that your phone keeps broadcasting a secure signal, which is picked up by nearby Android devices that are part of the Find Hub network. This data is uploaded to the Google servers, which in turn help you detect the approximate location of your lost device.
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You might now think about what will happen if the thief quickly turns off your device after stealing it. To tackle this situation, the Find Hub service supports Bluetooth-based finding, which allows the stolen phone to send Bluetooth and proximity data (even when it is turned off) to nearby devices for several hours so that you can find its location. The only requirement for this to work is that Bluetooth and location services must have been turned on before your phone was shut down.
All this sounds great, right? Unfortunately, Bluetooth-based finding is currently only supported on Pixel phones. It was made available with the release of the Pixel 8 series and has been part of all the Google phones released since then. It was expected that Samsung would make the upcoming Galaxy S series devices compatible with this feature, but a recent finding indicates that we are going to be disappointed this year again.
One user recently shared a log associated with a font-related issue on the Galaxy S26 Ultra on the Google Issue Tracker. The log reportedly has an entry that says, [ro.bluetooth.finder.supported]:[false]. This basically indicates that Bluetooth-based finding isn't coming to the Galaxy S26 lineup.
Would you consider a Pixel or an iPhone over the Galaxy S26 because of the lack of powered-off tracking?
Come on, Samsung, learn from your rivals
Google Find Hub logo. | Image by Google
Bluetooth-based or powered-off tracking is really a great addition to the Google Find Hub service. I say this because I have personally experienced its effectiveness when one of my friends' Pixel 10 Pro was recently stolen, and the thief immediately turned it off. My friend then logged in to his Find Hub account on my phone, and we were able to track the phone's location.
If it were a Samsung phone, we might have never been able to track down its location, even though SmartThings Find (Samsung's version of Find Hub) comes with an offline finding feature. That's because it only helps find the device when it isn't connected to any sort of network, and not when the phone is turned off, which many might actually think is how the feature would function after reading the "offline finding" name.
Another Samsung competitor, Apple, also allows you to find your iPhone even when it has been turned off. All you have to do is configure the Find My service on your iPhone and make sure that the Send Last Location option is enabled. The latter option allows your iPhone to send its last location to your selected device just before the battery runs out completely.
Considering both Google and Apple support this feature, I was really hopeful that the Korean giant would finally offer it in the upcoming Galaxy S26 lineup. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be happening if the log that has surfaced online is correct.
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Aman Kumar is a tech news writer with a long-standing passion for smartphones. Aman specializes in everything smartphones, from AI features like Pixel’s Camera Coach to understanding ideal hardware combinations. He loves breaking down complex features in a simple, clear way and hopes manufacturers bring back bold designs like the Nokia N-Gage. When he’s not writing, he’s either gaming on PUBG or talking fitness as a dedicated gym enthusiast.
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