Club Benefits
Right after the Galaxy S26 Ultra launch I had some burning questions:
- What the heck does an agentic AI phone mean and how will it make my life better?
- How does the Privacy Display really work — and are their trade-offs?
- Why did the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus both get $100 price hikes?
- Why ditch titanium on the Ultra for aluminum?
- Is Samsung considering silicon carbon batteries for its flagships?
Those are just some of the things on my mind right after Samsung Unpacked. So I spoke with Drew Blackard, Samsung's senior VP of mobile product development, to get some answers, and he was very open about the choices Samsung made with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, as well as the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus.
Here’s just some of the highlights. And be sure to check out our in-depth video interview right here.
Privacy Display: Amazing but at what cost?
At a time Samsung (and everyone else) is stuffing as many AI features inside their phones as possible, it’s nice to know that one of the best things about the Galaxy S26 Ultra is its hardware. The Privacy Display is the first of its kind on any phone, obscuring sensitive data from prying eyes by working at the pixel level.
Yes, you can easily turn Privacy Display on and off from Quick Settings for by double tapping the power button, but this feature is much smarter than that. You can have it so that the Privacy Display turns on automatically based on the app you’re using.
The coolest part is that because Privacy Display works at a pixel level, it can do portions of the screen. So if you imagine you're looking at the browser just reading an update and a text message notification comes in at the top, you can have it just block out the text message notification. So it really takes kind of privacy to a whole new level.”
But does having a Privacy Display result in trade-offs? Based on our initial testing, the S26 Ultra’s panel is dimmer and has narrower viewing angles than the S25 Ultra even with Privacy Display turned off when viewing SDR content. But the brightness in on par with HDR content.
Samsung doesn’t believe that it is sacrificing the viewing experience.
“Users aren't going to be able to tell a difference,” Blackard said.”It’s an amazing display. I can say with confidence that people will have an amazing experience with it off and have that added flexibility when it's on.
What an ‘Agentic AI phone’ can do
During the Galaxy S26 launch Samsung threw around the term ‘Agentic AI phone’ multiple times, but what does it actually mean?
The gist is that the phone can do things on your behalf and save you time (hopefully).
If you texted me to say ‘Hey, are you free for dinner tonight at 7 pm.' Instead of having to leave the app and go look at my calendar to find the day and see if I'm free, it can immediately look in the calendar for me and pull up availability.”
Drew Blackard, Samsung
For example, Now Nudge can understand the context of your conversation in the Messaging app and then provide shortcuts based on what’s being discussed.
“So, for example, if you texted me to say ‘Hey, are you free for dinner tonight at 7 pm,’” Blackard said. “Instead of having to leave the app and go look at my calendar to find the day and see if I'm free, it can immediately look in the calendar for me and pull up availability.”
But things really get interesting with app automation. Using Gemini, you’ll be able to have your Galaxy S26 start to book an Uber for you while you’re doing other things or put together a DoorDash order.
If app automation works as intended, it could make entire categories of apps obsolete over time.
“It takes it beyond just the traditional way of I need to go into a specific application to do a certain thing, and the device starting to understand more about your behaviors in the context of your situation,” Blackard said, “whether that's location or time based or other things, and it can start to then take actions on your behalf.
At least for now, the S26 won’t actually make purchases for you. You’ll still need to confirm everything, so you don’t have to worry about your phone going rogue.
Galaxy S26 prices: Why $100 more for the regular and Plus?
While the Galaxy S26 Ultra has the same starting price of $1,299 as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, I was somewhat surprised that the prices for the base Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus have both increased by $100.
In the case of the regular S26, the price hike is somewhat justified because you now get double the storage at 256GB. But the S26 Plus still comes with the same 256GB as the S25 Plus. So what gives?
“We've been able to maintain prices for pretty long time, Blackard said. At one point, the Ultra went up without the others going up. With every generation we have to look at a variety of different factors. And we've packed so much innovation year after year in terms of custom processors, bigger batteries, better screen technology and improved camera technology. And a lot more AI. And we have to take all these into consideration and still want to provide it as the most accessible price point for consumers as possible.”
The end of noisy low-light videos?
The Galaxy S26 Ultra got the most camera upgrades, especially with its larger apertures on the main and telephoto lenses. That means you should get brighter images and videos in low light.
But the regular S26 and S26 Plus should also shine brighter when the lights go down.
“All three devices have a new capability which is really cool within our AI ISP, the image signal processor,” Blackard shared.
Every camera sensor has its own unique noise profile, and the S26 series is smart enough to “actually learn that device’s noise profile… and then it can actually create a noise filter very specific to that noise profile.”
Where is our silicon carbon batteries?
While Chinese phone makers are pushing the envelope with high capacity silicon carbon batteries, Samsung decided to stick with Li-ion for the S26 lineup. And some of these competing phones are impressive, such as the 7,300 mAh OnePlus 15 that lasted over 25 hours in our battery test. It's not the champ in our best phone battery life list.
So when might Samsung jump on this trend? Right now they're not making any commitments.
"Yeah, I would say still investigating. We're always looking at new technologies and seeing what we can deliver," Blackard said. "Today I think we're prioritizing battery life effectively, and we feel really strongly that all three devices will have more than all-day battery life. And even in terms of some of the fast charging that we talked about, we'll have even faster charging times, which is really cool. So that's our priority for today, but we'll continue to investigate."
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