I knew this was going to be the case — all the rumors and tips pointed towards it. Samsung‘s Galaxy S26 series is about as iterative as Galaxy phones can be, even after what could arguably be seen as a couple of other iterative generations.
Is that a bad thing? Well no. It’s not exactly exciting for diehard tech fans, but what Samsung has with its trio of flagship phones is a somewhat perfected recipe for new phones that will likely appeal to people looking to upgrade from an S24 or S23 or maybe older.
I got a closer look at the Galaxy S26 Ultra, as well as its standard and Plus siblings, at a press event in Samsung’s London Kings Cross flagship store. These are my early thoughts…
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra specs and price
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Dimensions: |
163.6 mm (height) x 78.1 mm (width) x 7.9 mm (depth) |
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Weight: |
214g |
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Display: |
6.9-inch AMOLED 2X display |
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Resolution: |
3120 x 1440 pixels |
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Refresh rate: |
1-120Hz |
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Chipset: |
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy |
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RAM: |
12GB / 16GB |
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Storage: |
256GB / 512GB / 1TB |
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OS: |
Android 16 |
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Main camera: |
200MP; f/1.4; 0.6µm sensor |
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Ultrawide camera: |
50MP; f/1.9; 0.7µm sensor |
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Telephoto camera 1 |
10MP; f/2.4; 0.7µm; 5x optical zoom |
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Telephoto camera 2 |
50MP; f/2.9; 0.7µm; 10x optical quality zoom |
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Selfie camera: |
12MP; f/2.2; 1.17µm |
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Battery: |
5,000mAh |
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Charging: |
Super Fast Charging 3.0, Super Fast Wireless Charging |
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Colors: |
Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, Black, White, Silver Shadow, Pink Gold |
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Price |
From $1,299 / £1,279 |
Nip, tuck and polish
At first glance, you’ll probably struggle to see much of a difference between the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The design is pretty much the same as before, but Samsung has made the edge a little rounder, which makes the slab-like phone sit a bit more comfortably in my hand.
It’s also a little slimmer than the S25 Ultra, which is appreciated but not exactly noticeable, and that comes as a result of the phone being around half a millimeter taller and wider.
While I didn’t have my S25 Ultra on hand for a direct comparison – I’m still sporting my slightly battered iPhone 17 – I did think the S26 Ultra just feels that bit more refined, threading the line between comfortable rounded edges and avoiding the large phone from feeling slippery.
The display still comes in at 6.9 inches, which is plenty for anyone (quiet at the back), and sports the LTPO 120Hz to 1Hz refresh rate panel.
But there’s a subtle upgrade here in that the ProScaler upscaling function the display uses to polish up lower-resolution visuals into something that better suits the 3120 x 1440 resolution screen has been improved. The display also supports the mDNI codec, which should mean the screen can show a wider range of colors and render them with more precision.
In practical terms, I think it would take the most eagle-eyed of Galaxy users to spot big differences, but like a lot of previous Galaxy S Ultra phones, the display on the S26 Ultra looked fantastic to me; I tend to think Samsung produces the best phone displays.
On the phone’s color options, things are a little shrug-worthy. The ‘hero’ color is ‘Cobalt Violet’, which is fine, and goes alongside Sky Blue, Black, White, and online exclusive shades of ‘Silver Shadow’ and ‘Pink Gold’. These colors are inoffensive for a large phone, but after the orange iPhone 16 Pro, I do feel Samsung could have pushed the boat out a bit; I’d have loved a punchy green option, maybe British Racing Green.
Perfunctory performance
Look under the hood of the Galaxy S26 Ultra, and you’ll find a 3-nanometer Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset. Naturally, this brings in a performance boost for CPU, GPU, and NPU elements of the chip, but there’s nothing here right now to truly write home about.
I didn’t get to see whether Qualcomm’s latest slice of high-end mobile silicon drastically improved gaming on the S26 Ultra. But improved NPU performance should mean snappier artificial intelligence features without the need to tap into the cloud.
Proper testing and deeper benchmarks will tell the full story, but expect the Galaxy S26 Ultra to rub shoulders with Apple’s A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17 Pro Max and perhaps whatever chip comes loaded into a next-gen iPhone later this year.
There’s a redesigned vapor chamber, which is larger and is 21% more efficient in heat dissipation than before, so that should be a boon to mobile gamers and power users. And that should also help with battery longevity, especially as the S26 Ultra sticks to the 5,000mAh of its predecessor.
But there’s now ‘Super Fast Charging 3.0’ that should charge the battery from zero to 75% in 30 minutes, and ‘Super Fast Wireless Charging’ offers faster, wire-free battery juicing.
Much as before, there are storage options of 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB. But this time, opting for the largest option will net users 16GB of RAM rather than 12GB. I can’t say I’ve ever thought too much about extra RAM on phones, but as they embrace more AI features and functions, more memory should make for a snappier smart smartphone.
All in all, there’s a lot of what one would expect from a flagship Samsung phone, but I didn’t get the impression that the performance on offer will be partially noticeable over that of the S25 or S24 Ultra models.
Smarter shooting
The suite of rear cameras for the Galaxy S26 Ultra haven’t got any major upgrades in terms of hardware, though the 200-megapixel camera can capture 47% brighter shots, and the 50MP telephoto can snap 37% brighter photos. This means a boost to night photography and video capture, which is always appreciated as there’s gains to be had in low-light photography and image processing.
But it’s on the software side that things get more interesting. The Galaxy S26 Ultra can now track subjects in 4K video, thanks to capturing 8K footage and cropping into 4K, all with the help of AI processing. For people who like to record music artists and sports events, this could be quite a slick feature.
There’s also an AI-aided super steady mode, which almost acts like a digital gimbal for the Ultra’s cameras. By mixing gyroscope and accelerometer data, the mode can automatically stabilize video even up to 360 degrees of movement and angles. From what I saw, this is quite special and could be great for content creators who don’t want to spend money on a load of physical stabilization tools.
Speaking of creators, there’s support for the APV video codec, which Samsung says provides virtually lossless video. This isn’t my area of expertise, but I do think it helps make a flagship phone feel more like a proper tool than just a feature-packed gadget.
The front-facing camera still sports a 12MP sensor, but it now has an AI-enhanced image signal processor that should help the camera be more aware of what’s in frame and deliver better portrait shots and better skin tones; the latter is interesting, as I’ve always felt Samsung doesn’t win on accurate skin tones.
All in all, it feels like Samsung is doing a bit of consolidating with its cameras on the S26 Ultra, deeper bedding in AI and software improvements, rather than trying to push hardware. If that leads to ever more refined photos from a flagship phone that consistently hits the high spots on our best camera phones list, then I’m all for that, but proper testing will see what the S26 Ultra can do.
AI acceleration
With the Galaxy S25 series, Samsung seemed to really hit its stride with AI integration and its own Galaxy AI. Now with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, it feels like Samsung has a proper ‘AI phone’, thanks to smarter tools, upgrades, and deeper AI integration.
On the upgrades side, Photo Assist has been given a shot of smarts in that objects can be added to photos via natural language prompts, so you can simply ask for something to be generated and added to a scene without having to go and create an asset. But if you need to do the latter, then the Creative Studio tool can do that, generating things like stickers, image templates, invitations, and more via prompts, which can then be shared.
Circle to Search, which isn’t exclusive to Samsung phones but I believe will debut with upgrades on the S26 family, can now recognize multiple objects that have been circled, which could be a big upgrade; I didn’t get a chance to really get a feel for this, but Circle to Search has impressed me a lot before.
The document scanning function can now extract more data from things like screenshots, and can minimize distortions in scanned documents, with images automatically categorized and made searchable with natural language queries.
Now Brief, the Now Bar and Now Nudge notifications have been sharpened up to better serve up more personalized and contextual information and prompts based on what a notification might flag or a particular message, such as understanding what’s been asked in a message and serving up options; say providing a phone number to a person looking for a contact or suggesting meeting locations based on someone asking if you’re free to meet for lunch.
This is helped by the Personal Data Engine that aims to extract information from apps and notifications, as well as a deeper analysis of a user’s behavior to serve up more personalized information and prompts. The idea here, from my take on the tech, is to make AI feel more useful to you than simply a tool you have to work with.
Audio Eraser gets a rather neat upgrade in that it can now work with third-party apps like YouTube and Instagram, using AI to filter out background noise so people can focus more on things like commentary in a football match.
While Google Gemini is the main AI assistant on the S26 Ultra when it comes to asking for general information, Bixby has been made more intelligent with a new large language model underpinning it, with the idea that it’ll help users get more on their phone without digging through settings.
Bixby understands natural language and can be prompted to direct people to things like screen settings if asked ‘to make the screen easier on my eyes,’ to which the assistant will then serve up the option to turn on the ‘eye comfort shield’ mode.
Samsung said this is about more than just Bixby controlling your Galaxy phone, and more about better understanding what you want. I think it’s a smart feature, but I remain a little unsold on it – I’m of the belief that power users tend to go for Ultra phones and are probably not the type of people who need to be directed to certain settings. Equally, I have found that Samsung can bury things in menus, so being able to easily ask Bixby to find me a setting that I might not know the proper name for might end up being very handy. For questions not related to the phone, the S26 Ultra’s version of Bixby will now hand off the queries to new AI partner Perplexity.
While there isn’t one brand-new AI feature that I think the Galaxy S26 Ultra can pin its colors to, I do think the AI experience is probably tighter, slicker, and more responsive in this generation, which means the Ultra can compete with the smarts of the Google Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro.
Keep it secret, keep it safe
Speaking of standout features, the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s core new feature is its Privacy Display. Exclusive to the flagship phone, it’s the first phone to have a privacy display built in at a pixel level, and can block people from seeing what you’re looking at from pretty much all angles but straight on.
In action, it’s really rather slick. The Privacy Display can be toggled from the S26 Ultra’s drop-down menu, where it will instantly make the screen look like a dark slab for anyone trying to look at it off-center.
There’s a solid degree of customization here, too, where the privacy screen can be activated on a per-app basis, with different levels of privacy. For example, you could choose to have notifications blacked out but the rest of the screen visible. How tweakable the options will be was hard to tell with limited time, and it may be the case that granular tweaks aren’t possible at the moment; we’ll have to see when we give the phone a full test.
However, I think it’s a rather cool feature and something a bit special that elicits a reaction in an otherwise iterative phone generation. I don’t think it’s a game-changer for the Galaxy Ultra phones and is likely something all but the most privacy-conscious would see as a must-have feature worth upgrading for. But I do think other phone brands will follow suit, perhaps even Apple, as it’s often touted privacy as one of the core tenets of iPhones.
Speaking of following suit, Samsung has taken a page out of Apple and Google‘s smartphone books and brought call screening to the Galaxy S26 series. Now AI can be used to answer calls from unknown numbers, prompt callers to identify themselves and the reason for calling, and then provide a summary of that to the user, who can choose to take the call or not. It might not be an original Samsung idea, but such smart call screening is definitely a good addition to the AI mix on the S26 Ultra.
And for anyone worrying on the AI features and tools having access to a lot of personal data, there’s the option to control how much access AI has to your information at a system level, as well as on an app-by-app basis.
Early thoughts
Samsung makes good phones, and with the Galaxy S-series, it makes great phones. I don’t think that has changed with the Galaxy S26 Ultra or its stablemates. It might be the most iterative generation of Galaxy S phones I can think of, but with the S26 Ultra, Samsung has taken its best phone and made it just that little bit better.
More time and in-depth testing will see if my first impressions are on the money, but in many ways, it’s hard for Samsung to fail at this point. Better AI integration, camera performance tweaks, more power, and that new Privacy Display make the S26 Ultra a true contender for phone of the year.
I don’t think you need to get a pre-order in if you have a Galaxy S25 Ultra, or indeed a OnePlus 15 or Pixel 10 Pro. But if you’re at the end of a carrier contract and have a Galaxy S24 Ultra or are looking to upgrade from a Galaxy S23 Ultra, then the S26 Ultra is shaping up to be a phone well worth your consideration.
Ultimately, I was left somewhat bored by the Galaxy S26 Ultra as a vehicle for phone innovation, even with a privacy screen that’s ripe for copying, but I do have to tip my metaphorical hat to it as being a refined take on an already excellent smartphone formula.
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