Galaxy S26 Ultra review: Samsung’s most complete phone yet

This is the first S series flagship that might pull me way from Google’s Pixel line.

Every year, Samsung sends me its latest high-end Galaxy S Series smartphone to review. I get my hands on the device just ahead of release, spend a few days with it, and pull together my perspective on the phone. This has been my routine since the Galaxy S6 line, with surprisingly very few missed releases. Then inevitably, a few weeks later, Samsung asks for the device to be sent back. In the tech blogging world, a lot of companies do this, especially with big-ticket, expensive products, and it's never been an issue for me — if I were in this line of work for the free devices, I would have moved on a long time ago.

I'm telling this story because I hope Samsung doesn't take the Galaxy S26 Ultra I have back — yes, I really like the phone that much, despite it only offering minor updates. Thanks to improved low-light performance and the new Privacy Display, a sleeper hit feature I've come to really value over the past few weeks, the Galaxy S26 Ultra offers one of the best all-around Android packages out there.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is the first Ultra S series smartphone in several years that could pull me away from Google's Pixel series. Samsung sent XDA Galaxy S26 Ultra for review. It did not have any input on the contents of this article. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is the first phone to feature a built-in privacy display, on top of top-of-the-line specs, a solid camera, and a familiar, but great-looking design.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra's specs are overall very similar to the Galaxy S25 Ultra's. The smartphone features a 6.9-inch 3,120 x 1,440 pixel-resolution AMOLED 120Hz display with 2,500 nits of peak brightness, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage, and 12GB of RAM (unless you have the 1TB version, in which case you get 16GB of RAM). The phone measures 6.44 x 3.07 x 0.31 inches (163.6 x 78.1 x 7.9mm) and weighs 7.55oz (214g).

Like in years past, the Galaxy S26 Ultra features Qualcomm's latest top-tier chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. On the camera front, not much has changed beyond wider aperture across the board and improved AI noise reduction, with the rear camera array featuring an f/1.4 200-megapixel wide, an f/2.4 10-megapixel telephoto, and an f/1.9 50-megapixel ultrawide. Finally, there's the f/2.2 12-megapixel front-facing camera.

In terms of pricing, the Galaxy S26 Ultra starts at $1,300, and is available in Black, White, Sky Blue, and Cobalt Violet (there are also Samsung Store-exclusive colors, Silver Shadow and Pink Gold). Let's get this out of the way first — Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra looks identical to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, to the point that I've gotten the two devices confused several times over the past few weeks.

One notable change is that the corners are slightly more rounded this year, though you really need to look to notice it. The rear lens also sits atop a sizable camera bump, rather than each lens protruding from the back of the phone independently like last year. I'm not a big fan of this change, but it's not a big deal either — both rear camera array designs look fine. What's new this year is that Samsung has returned to an aluminum build across its entire S series line for 2026, ditching titanium entirely.

Apple made a similar move with the iPhone 17 Pro to improve heat dissipation, and I imagine Samsung made the same trade-off. I didn't notice a difference in the feel of the aluminum, but it's unclear if the phone will suffer from longer-term durability issues. The phone is slightly thinner and lighter than its predecessor, but the change is barely noticeable, even when comparing the Galaxy S26 Ultra directly to the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

The built-in S Pen storage slot is back, and, like last year, it securely holds the stylus. It now pokes out slightly due to the phone's curved edges (I still don't have much use for the S Pen, and it still doesn't feature Bluetooth). Here's the easiest way to put the Galaxy S26 Ultra's design into perspective. If you haven't liked the look of Samsung's Ultra line for the past few years, that's not going to change with the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Like Apple and Google, Samsung has settled into an aesthetic rhythm with its flagship smartphone. To be clear, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the Galaxy S26 Ultra is a sleek-looking, very solid device, but if you were hoping for a drastic change in the Ultra's design, you're out of luck this year. Like in years past, the Galaxy S26 Ultra features an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor built into its display.

For some reason, it doesn't seem to work well with glass screen protectors. I haven't encountered this problem with previous S series Ultra devices, but if you're like me and like to keep your smartphone's screen scratch-free, this issue is worth noting. I didn't expect to like the new Privacy Display so much, let alone for it to work as well as it does. The Galaxy S26 Ultra's display features the same hardware specs as last year, but with a tap of an on-screen button, the Privacy Display prevents others from clearly viewing the screen from an angle.

According to Samsung, Privacy Display works by turning off the screen's angled pixels. The feature obviously doesn't work if you're looking at the display head-on, so you can still see your own phone's screen. While this makes sense, it's worth keeping in mind, since a few people I showed the feature to were surprised that you can still clearly see the display from over someone's shoulder. Like a physical privacy screen protector, when you view the Galaxy S26 Ultra's display at an angle, everything fades to a dull black.

You can still see the outline of Android 16-powered One UI 8.5, but it's generally not very visible. Turning up the intensity with the Maximum Privacy Protection setting makes everything slightly harder to see, but I found it degrades the quality of the phone's otherwise great-looking screen when viewed head-on. During my time with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, I manually turned on the Privacy Display when I actually needed it, like when traveling in close quarters with people on a train or on a lengthy flight with a nosey person sitting beside me.

You can also set Privacy Display to turn on under certain conditions, like when you get notifications or with certain apps (like banking apps), which, while I haven't spent a lot of time trying it myself, a lot of people will find very useful, since it lets you better protect sensitive information like your pin. Over the past few weeks, I've grown to really appreciate the Galaxy S26 Ultra's Privacy Display, especially when I'm using the phone in public.

It's the sort of killer feature I'm surprised other smartphone manufacturers haven't already added to their devices, and I expect Apple to copy it and pretend like it came up with it when the iPhone 18 Pro launches this fall. Like every smartphone manufacturer, Samsung is all-in on AI. At this point, there are so many AI features on the Galaxy S26 Ultra that it's difficult to know where to start and what's actually even new.

I found the new Photo Assist feature, which serves as the main tool for editing and altering images in Samsung's Gallery app, to be the most useful. It easily lets you clean up images by removing reflections and objects. You can also add objects to images with natural language prompts, like a bear in a photo with your cat, or a sea monster in the ocean. I haven't found Samsung's take on AI additions to photos to look as believable as the Pixel's Magic Editor, though (you could argue this is probably a good thing).

There's also Creative Studio, which lets you create stickers and greeting cards with AI. Most of this art looks pretty bad, but I can see some people finding Creative Studio useful. Other AI features include a better document scanner, call screening, and the return of the Now Brief. I ran into issues with the Pixel 10 Pro's Magic Cue feature, and I've encountered the same problem with Samsung's version of the same concept, Now Nudge.

The feature is supposed to analyze what's on your screen, whether it's text or images, and offer useful shortcuts, like sending photos to a friend from a recent trip. I've mostly used the Galaxy S26 Ultra as my main device for the past few weeks, and it still hasn't shown up for me. Samsung says it can take time for the feature to learn how you use your smartphone before it activates. When Magic Cue does appear, I'll update this review with my thoughts on it.

"…these really aren't the kind of AI features I find useful or that I'd recommend anyone rely on consistently." Sticking with the concept of proactive AI, the very futuristic Automated App Actions, which allows doing things like booking a ride or ordering food with the help of AI, isn't available in my region yet (I live in Canada — app support will also be limited when it does arrive). When this feature launches, I'll test it out and add my impressions to this review.

With all that said, these really aren't the kind of AI features I find useful or recommend anyone rely on consistently. AI is still far from perfect, especially when it comes to more complicated tasks. It's also worth noting that none of these features are entirely new; we've already seen similar functionality from Google's Pixel 10 series. On the camera front, not much has changed. Samsung's photos retain the more out-there, bright style they've always featured, including blown-out highlights, overly bright colors, and an overall saturated tone.

I don't hate the look, but I prefer the Pixel 10 Pro's or iPhone 17 Pro's more grounded take on photography. Still, the Galaxy S26 Ultra snaps stellar images, especially under low light, and I understand why some people prefer this more dynamic take on photography — the photos look undeniably great. The phone's 200-megapixel wide camera now has an f/1.4 aperture, up from f/1.7 last year, and the 50-megapixel telephoto has an f/2.9 aperture, up from f/3.4.

Alongside improved AI noise reduction, this also considerably improves low-light performance, resulting in cleaner images when shooting in dimly lit locations. It's the sort of thing you don't really notice until you see an image shot with the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Galaxy S26 Ultra side-by-side, but when you do, the improvement becomes very apparent. On the video side, the only notable new video feature is Super Steady Horizontal lock, which keeps the horizon level even if you rotate the phone.

This is great for when you're moving the smartphone around and shooting a video, or if you're like me, and often accidentally default to shooting video in portrait orientation. It works great, and it really comes in handy when shooting video of my son, who is eight months old and never stops moving. I can see similar functionality coming to pretty much every flagship smartphone soon. At this point, Qi2 and its MagSafe-like magnets have been around for a few years, and I still don't understand why Google is the only Android manufacturer to fully implement the standard with its PixelSnap magnetic accessory ecosystem.

While the Galaxy S26 Ultra offers Qi2 wireless charging at 25W, it still doesn't feature built-in magnets, with Samsung once again relying on its own magnetic cases and the third-party case ecosystem (I've been using dbrand's Ghost Case 2.0). While this is fine if you use a case on your phone, some people prefer to live on the edge and go case-less. Not putting magnets directly in the phone just seems like a way for Samsung to sell more cases.

On the plus side, wired charging has been increased to 60W, allowing you to top up the smartphone's 5,000 mAh battery more quickly. In terms of raw power, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 delivers 3,694 in single-core and 11,180 in multi-core performance. These impressive benchmarks are backed by the smooth experience I've had with the smartphone over the past few weeks. I haven't encountered a single instance of slowdown or lag while playing games, editing photos in Lightroom CC, or doomscrolling across various social media platforms.

Battery life seems to be generally in line with last year, with the phone typically at about 25-30% at 9pm after a day of regular use that includes snapping a few photos, responding to messages, listening to podcasts, and playing a couple of lengthy YouTube videos. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is a very solid smartphone that easily goes head-to-head with the Pixel 10 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro, two devices I view as the best high-end options right now.

However, I want to make it clear that if you're using a somewhat recent Ultra device, there isn't much here to warrant an upgrade. In that same vein, if you were hoping this was the device where Samsung would really change things, whether on the One UI front or in terms of design, the Galaxy S26 Ultra isn't for you. That said, if you're a Samsung smartphone user and still rocking a Galaxy S23 or below, the Galaxy S26 Ultra amounts to one of the best all-around smartphone packages the South Korean tech giant has released in years.

Summary

This report covers the latest developments in samsung. The information presented highlights key changes and updates that are relevant to those following this topic.

---