Samsung Galaxy S26 Series: Everything Hinges on the Ultra

Let me start with the thing that’s been bothering me since I picked Samsung Galaxy S26 line up. The base S26. The regular one. The $899 phone that most people who read this are probably going to end up buying. Its battery is worse than the S25. Not dramatically 26 minutes on a Tom’s Guide test, which in daily life you’d never actually feel. But Samsung charged people a hundred dollars more for it. You go from $799 to $899 and the battery goes down. That’s the deal. I keep coming back to it because it’s the kind of thing that should be the headline of every review and instead keeps getting buried in comparison tables. So I’m putting it here, up top, before anything else. The Ultra is a different conversation and we’ll get there.

Samsung announced all three on Feb 25 in San Francisco, stores March 11. Late for them, usually it’s January. Some supply chain things they never explained properly. Doesn’t matter. Now, they’re all available.

Design:

The S26 looks like the S25. If someone handed you one without telling you what it was, you’d probably guess S25 or maybe S24. Flat sides, the usual glass back situation, camera bump that’s been reshaped slightly. Comes in Black, Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, White. I want to say something about the Cobalt Violet because I think it’s being undersold. In press photos it looks kind of murky and corporate. In person, in a shop last week, it’s actually quite nice, this sort of deep iridescent purple that shifts a little depending on the light. I nearly bought it instead of the Black I ended up with just to have something different. Anyway, IP68, 1.5m for 30 minutes (GSMArena, 2026). Same as S25. Fine.

Still no magnetic charging standard. Still. Three years of me writing this same complaint. I’ve got a magnetic car mount that works perfectly with my old iPhone accessories and it’s been useless ever since I switched to Android. Not just with Samsung, Android in general doesn’t have this sorted out but I bring it up every year in Samsung reviews specifically because they’re the ones who could force the industry to do something about it and they haven’t. Moving on before I get too irritated about it.

Screen: And the one thing I wasn’t expecting

The S26 is now 6.3 inches, up from 6.2. S26+ stays 6.7. Ultra stays 6.9. Dynamic AMOLED 2X, QHD+, 1-120Hz, Samsung’s standard excellent panel, same as S25. Nothing to add. Except the Ultra has this thing now called Privacy Display. The technology behind it is Flex Magic Pixel, it’s built into the actual panel hardware, not added on top with a film or an app. What it does is restrict the viewing angle at the pixel level. From straight ahead: normal screen. From the side: black. The person sitting next to you on a bus or in a meeting room can’t see what’s on your phone. Like, at all. Not “hard to read”, actually blank (Samsung Newsroom India, 2026). 

I used it for nearly two weeks. It held up. I was on the tube one morning, squashed between people, checking some messages I probably shouldn’t have been checking, and the woman pressed up against my left shoulder had zero visibility into what was on the screen. Not a glimpse. That’s not something I could say about any phone I’ve used before.

Here is the catch though: the screen gets dimmer when Privacy Display is on. Noticeably dimmer. Sit in a cafe on a grey day and it’s fine. Walk outside into actual sunlight and you start having to think about whether the privacy tradeoff is worth the squinting. It will get better first gen hardware always does but right now, in bright light, it’s a real limitation. Honestly it comes down to how you move around. Heavy commuter, open office, travel a lot you’ll be reaching for it constantly. If you’re mostly at a desk working from home, you might turn it on twice and forget about it.

Battery: Start here if you’re reading this for the Ultra specifically

16 hours 10 minutes. That’s what Tom’s Guide got from the S26 Ultra on their standard test (Tom’s Guide, 2026). The S25 Ultra, same test, same reviewers: 14 hours and change. So over two extra hours. On a phone people were already happy with the battery on. I spent a lot of time staring at that number trying to figure out if something was wrong with the test methodology. It wasn’t. NotebookCheck did their own independent run and found a 12% efficiency improvement over the S25 Ultra (NotebookCheck, 2026). Two separate testing setups, same conclusion. Samsung changed something, won’t say what and it’s working.

The regular S26 numbers, since I already brought them up: 11h 28m on Tom’s Guide. S25 was 11h 54m on that same test. So the upgrade costs more and lasts less. 26 minutes less. Small but real. Annoying. Capacities if you want them: 4,300 mAh in the base S26, 4,900 in the S26+, 5,000 in the Ultra (GSMArena, 2026).

Charging: 

The Ultra now does 60W wired. S25 Ultra was 45W. That’s actually a big jump in terms of how long you’re sitting next to a plug, you notice it. Qi2.2 wireless at 25W. S26 base is 25W wired, 15W wireless. All three models support 4.5W reverse wireless charging from the back of the phone, which I mention because it’s useful for Galaxy Watch owners specifically, you can top up the watch off the phone without finding another cable.

The Camera: specifically this 200MP thing

The ISOCELL HP2 sensor is three years old. It was in the S23 Ultra. The S24 Ultra. Now the S26 Ultra. Same sensor. 200MP. If you’re reading a spec sheet and someone highlights that number as though it’s new, it launched in 2023. Push back on it. The aperture changed though. f/1.7 on the S25 Ultra, f/1.4 on this one. Wider opening pulls in more light. Night shots, dim concert venues, candlelit restaurants, anywhere the S25 Ultra would start getting grainy, the S26 Ultra holds on a bit longer. You also get more background blur on portraits, which I happen to like but I know some people find it overdone. (DXOMARK, 2026). iPhone 17 Pro is at 168 if you’re wondering where it sits against Apple. Samsung’s getting closer. Still not there.

S26 and S26+ haven’t had their camera hardware changed. Same sensors as the S25 versions. Samsung did update the processing that runs on top, the AI image work that happens after you take the shot, so low-light and high-zoom results should be a bit cleaner. Day to day, food photos, quick snaps of stuff, the usual, I couldn’t pick the S26 shot from the S25 shot if you mixed them up on me. Maybe there are situations where you’d see it. I didn’t really find them.

Galaxy AI

Samsung says this is “the most intuitive Galaxy AI phone yet.” OK. Some of it works. Now Brief gives you a morning summary of your schedule and messages and I thought I’d turn it off immediately but I’ve now had it on for three weeks straight because I keep catching things I’d otherwise miss until midday. 

Call Assist does real-time translation during calls, I tested it, it held up. Audio Eraser is the best feature in this whole lineup and it’s not close: you record a video somewhere noisy, and then afterwards the phone can strip out the background sound and keep what you wanted. I showed it to a colleague at work and she asked if her S24 had it. Kind of, the S26 version is more consistent. 

Writing Assist, Transcript Assist, Photo Assist: these are improvements over what was in the S24, but they’re not new things. They shipped with the S24 series. Samsung has polished them up and they run better now, but if anyone in a store tells you these are 2026 additions, they’re not being fully accurate. Circle to Search did get a real update, the multi-element mode is noticeably better than last year, so that one counts. You pick between Gemini, Bixby, or Perplexity, Samsung lets you choose and doesn’t push one on you by default (Samsung Global Newsroom, 2026). I didn’t expect to appreciate that as much as I do.

Pricing

Everything is $100 more expensive than the equivalent S25 model. And 128GB storage is gone, 256GB is now the floor across all three.

Trade-ins can move these numbers significantly. Launch pre-order promos were up to $500 off the S26, $700 off the S26+, $900 off the Ultra (9to5Google, 2026). Those were launch deals. Check the Samsung.com trade-in calculator with your actual phone for whatever’s live now. Oh, and as I type this, Samsung is running a $200 promotional discount on the Ultra. The 256GB model is showing around $1,099.99. That’s the same price as the S26+. If that promo is still live when you read this, the Ultra becomes worth reconsidering even if you were already leaning toward the Plus. Go check.

Should you get one

Coming from an S25: as a matter of fact no. Screens are the same, design is basically the same, Galaxy AI was already on your phone, and the base battery got worse. Save the money, wait for the S27, see if they sort out the battery situation on the base model.

Coming from something from 2022 or before: different story, especially if you’re looking at the Ultra. The two-plus hour battery gain over the S25 Ultra is something you feel on long days, not a benchmark thing, more like “huh I still have 35% at 10pm” which is not something I used to think about. The f/1.4 aperture is a real camera upgrade for night shooting and indoor venues. Privacy Display is one of those things I thought I wouldn’t care about and now use every day without thinking about it. And if you’re on a 2022 phone the AI stuff is just a completely different league, not a small step up.

S26 and S26+ if you’re on an old phone: decent phones, worth buying, just not the part of this lineup I’d get excited about. The battery on the base model is going in the wrong direction and that bothers me, but it’s not so bad it would stop me recommending it for someone who needs an upgrade.

No proper MagSafe alternative yet. And honestly, I doubt the S27’s getting it either. I’ve been saying that for ages now.

Interested in similar devices? Read our buying guides on iPhone 17 series, Motorola Razr Lineup 2026 and compare iPhone 17 Pro vs Google Pixel 10 Pro.