At a glance, the entire new Samsung Galaxy S26 lineup is incredibly uniform, which might not seem like a big deal, but it is a departure for the Galaxy lineup, as the Ultra is usually distinctly different from its sibling Galaxy phones.
This new, unified design is, in my opinion, the first major S26 update, and it counts as the first big reveal of today’s Samsung Galaxy Unpacked February 2026 event in San Francisco, California.
New, unified look
For the Ultra, that design change means rounder corners and the end of titanium cases. In fact, all three phones now use aluminum, though Samsung tells us the Armor Aluminum on the S26 Ultra is more rigid than the aluminum found on the S26 and S26 Plus. The S26 Ultra is also thinner and lighter than ever (but with a taller camera array bump).
Not every update carries across all three new phones. The cameras on the S26 and S26 Plus are virtually unchanged from the previous S25 models. That’s not the case with the S26 Ultra.
Brighter cameras
From one perspective, the Galaxy S26 Ultra update leaves its many cameras unchanged:
- The main is still a 200MP wide
- The ultrawide is still 50MP
- The 3x telephoto is 10MP
- The 5x telephoto is 50MP
But two of the lenses you use most often are, Samsung claims, significantly brighter; The 200MP lens is 47% brighter, and the 50MP 5x lens is 37% brighter. How did Samsung do this? It lowered the apertures on both lenses (200MP from f1.7 to f1.4, and 50MP from f3.4 to f2.9), making them wider and able to pull in more available light. This could pay dividends in low-light and nighttime shots.
You might gather better selfies across the entire S26 lineup. The 12MP front cameras on the S26 Ultra, S26 Plus, and S26 all now feature an 85-degree field of view (FoV).
Twisting video
The S26 Ultra also gets the lion’s share of major video upgrades, including the fascinating new Super Steady enhancement that puts a virtual gimbal inside the phone, letting you turn it 360 degrees while keeping the action straight and smooth. This is one feature we can’t wait to try.
The S26 Ultra will also offer 8K 30fps video capture capabilities and even Advanced Professional Codec support, a feature that might not mean much to most users but could excite video professionals.
AI everywhere and Perplexity
The already rich array of AI tools on previous Galaxy phones only grows with the S26 lineup.
First of all, the original trio remains:
- Samsung Galaxy AI
- Bixby
- Google Gemini
But there are upgrades across the board and, yes, even the addition of yet one more AI model: Perplexity, but more on that in a moment.
Google Gemini enables the Samsung Galaxy S26 lineup’s first brush with agentic capabilities. For now, it will only let you ask Gemini to grab you an Uber, handling the multi-step process in the background but still allowing you to step in at any moment – there’s a little Gemini window where you can see what it’s doing – to grab the proverbial wheel.
Samsung is upgrading the Now Brief feature it introduced last year to let you read notifications and add their details to your Briefs.
There’s also a Google Magic Cue-like feature called Now Nudge, which aims to provide contextual suggestions in Messaging based on information it can pull from your calendar and Gallery photos. Imagine being in a text conversation with your aunt. Now Nudge might surface photos from a recent family birthday party to share.
Bixby is getting an update, too. Samsung says it will still be the best assistant to use when you need help with the phone (or to change a setting), but in the Galaxy S26 lineup, Bixby will also use Perplexity to answer more general-interest questions that do not necessarily relate to the phone in your hand.
Also, look for a smarter Circle to Search that can now identify multiple objects within a single search.
The most private mobile display ever?
One of the biggest and most buzz-worthy updates is the new Privacy Display. It’s only available on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but it could be an engineering marvel.
Put simply, Privacy Display keeps prying eyes from seeing what’s on your screen. This is a hardware feature that literally ensures that people off-angle (left, right, top, bottom) from your screen cannot see what is still perfectly clear to you.
What’s more, it doesn’t have to be the entire screen. Privacy display works at a pixel level and can gray out just one part of the screen, say, Notifications. It can be set to act only on specific apps, such as Messages or banking.
It’s probably the feature people will be talking about long after the big Unpacked event is over.
More power faster access
All three Galaxy S26 phones use the second-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Samsung claims the CPU is fast across CPU, NPU, and GPU operations.
To keep that extra performance from over-cooking the phone, Samsung also upgraded the S26 Ultra’s vapor chamber.
Finally, while we don’t yet know whether any of the batteries are longer-lasting (the S26 Ultra has the same 5,000mAh battery, the S26 Plus has a 4,900mAh battery, and the S26 4,300MAh), Samsung is promising that all the phones will charge faster via wired and wireless connections.
The S26 Ultra now supports a wired 60W charger, which could deliver 75% charge in 30 minutes.
The S26 now supports a 25W charger, and the S26 Plus can work with a 45W one.
Wireless charging speeds are up year over year: the S26 Ultra supports a new 25W wireless charger, the S26 Plus supports 20W, and the S26 supports 15W.
What this all means
While these are your major updates, there are multiple other small ones (even the colors are new), and we have no idea how impactful any of these features will be until we get our hands on the new Samsung Galaxy S26 lineup. That process should start today.
What do you think? Are these new looks, materials, camera, and AI capabilities, and that wild new Privacy Display enough to make you want to upgrade or even switch from the iPhone? Tell us in the comments below.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
