According to the World Health Organisation, around 57 million people were living with dementia globally as of 2021. Every year, there are nearly 10 million new cases, about one every three seconds.
The risk increases strongly with age. Dementia is most common in people aged 65 and older, but it isn’t an automatic part of aging, and it can occur earlier. Up to 9% of cases are young-onset dementia.
If you could predict dementia on your Galaxy phone, the pattern would be obvious years ahead of a diagnosis and you could make lifestyle adjustments to save yourself. It seems that's about to be made possible.
Brain Health will predict dementia when approved
Korean website ChosunBiz reports that Samsung is preparing to launch a Brain Health service that uses data from your phone and wearable to spot early changes in cognitive function.
The idea is that subtle shifts in how you move, sleep, speak, or interact with your device can signal cognitive decline long before obvious symptoms appear. Cognitive decline usually appears in slowed reactions, altered gait, disrupted sleep, changes in speech patterns, or reduced coordination.
Samsung believes these changes can be passively detected because your phone and smartwatch already observe these patterns every day. They are among your closest touchpoints.
If the system detects worrying trends, it could flag early signs of dementia or general cognitive decline, suggest preventive or corrective actions, alert caregivers in emergencies, and offer personalized brain-training programs to help maintain cognitive function.
As data privacy concerns continue to grow, the company plans to keep this data strictly on-device. Samsung Knox'll protect it. The technology itself is largely built, but the company is still running clinical validation with medical institutions. That’s why this hasn’t launched yet.
However, they will unveil it at CES 2026, and it would be one of the boldest examples yet of consumer tech stepping into preventive healthcare. The event is happening in Las Vegas from January 6-9 this year.
Brain Health may affect Galaxy phone sales
In September 2025, Samsung also publicly detailed the research behind a similar idea. They revealed that their teams had developed digital biomarker technology capable of tracking early cognitive decline using everyday smartphone and Galaxy Watch data.
The said technology is primarily aimed at Alzheimer’s disease, because Alzheimer’s accounts for about 60–70% of all dementia cases. However, they were careful not to say it's just for Alzheimer’s.
It's unclear whether it's the same technology. But if it works, it’s a success medically and commercially. Health features are already one of the strongest reasons people stay inside the Galaxy ecosystem. More people would be interested in buying Samsung phones.
However, Samsung does not have an unblemished track record with biometric accuracy. Although their Heart rate, sleep stages, SpO₂, and other data have improved, they’ve still been inconsistent across models and updates.
Dementia detection is orders of magnitude more complex than counting steps or estimating REM sleep. It's right to question whether a company that still struggles with basic physiological signals should be trusted with cognitive inference.
