I've been testing the Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus — and it's a great phone that few people will actually want

Great sometimes isn't good enough, and the Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus is perhaps the prime example of this.

To spoil this review early, I like the S26 Plus plenty. But it's hard to explain why you would go for this instead of the cheaper Galaxy S26, or more fully-specced Galaxy S26 Ultra. Or for that matter, why the S26 Plus instead of an iPhone or a Pixel.

These have been hard questions to answer with previous Galaxy S Plus generations, but it's even harder this year, thanks to price increases and more Ultra-exclusive upgrades. The Plus has updates of its own, but those updates are shared with the other models, leaving us in the same awkward spot.

You will find in this Galaxy S26 Plus review that what Samsung has given us is a perfectly good phone, but one that's trickier to recommend than ever.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus: Specifications

Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus: Price and availability

Official sales for the Samsung Galaxy S26 series began on March 11, 2026, with the cheapest version of the Galaxy S26 Plus costing $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,849. That unfortunately means a price hike for U.S., U.K. and Australian buyers compared to the Galaxy S25 Plus.

It puts the S26 Plus in an unusual position. The next step up in Samsung's stable, the Galaxy S26 Ultra, is not that much more expensive, at $1,299 / £1,279 / AU$2,199. And the Galaxy S26, which is smaller but otherwise identical to the Plus, comes in at a more reasonable $899 / £879 / AU$1,549.

The iPhone 17 Pro is the same price (or cheaper in AU$) as the S26 Plus, but is a smaller device, while the iPhone 17 Pro Max or Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, both more similar in size to the Plus, cost a few hundred bucks/quid more.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus: Design

Samsung elected to keep the Galaxy S26 Plus and base S26 roughly the same as the S25 and S25 Plus models that we had last year, with the only big difference being a new stadium-shaped block that elevates the lenses from the back panel. It's enough to make it an obviously different phone from the back, but the overall look is still unmistakably Samsung.

You can pick up the S26 Plus (or any S26 model for that matter) in Black, White, Cobalt Violet and Sky Blue. The black unit I have been testing is attractive enough, but both the violet and blue options seem to strike the perfect balance between eye-catching and smart.

The Galaxy S26 Plus' size and weight is identical to those of the S25 Plus from last year, as are the durability specs of an IP68 dust/water resistance rating and the use of toughened Gorilla Glass Victus 2 front and back. While an update to GG Armor 2 glass, as the S26 Ultra uses, would have been welcome, I wouldn't want to encourage Samsung to add more features that would have increased the price even further.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus: Display

The 6.7-inch screen on the Galaxy S26 Plus, with a sharp QHD resolution and a 1 - 120Hz refresh rate, sits nicely between the smaller, lower-res 6.3-inch display on the Galaxy S26, and the larger 6.9-inch panel on the Ultra. There's no Privacy Display on the Plus. Samsung's reserved its groundbreaking anti-snooper feature for the Ultra only.

Fortunately, looking at the benchmark figures shows that this middle child of the S26 family actually performs brilliantly even without Samsung's latest tech.

In its default Vivid color profile, the S26 Plus is brighter, more colorful and more accurate than the iPhone 17 Pro Max. It beats the Pixel 10 Pro XL on color coverage and accuracy too, although Google's Super Actua display tech remains unbeaten on the brightness front.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus: Cameras

The Galaxy S26 Plus inherits the Galaxy S25 Plus' camera hardware, with only some minor alterations on the software side for upgrades.

For your main photography needs, the S26 Plus provides 50MP main, 12MP ultrawide, and 10MP 3x telephoto cameras, along with a 12MP selfie on the front. This is exactly the same set-up as the Galaxy S26 has, with only the 3x telephoto and selfie shooters shared with the Ultra.

To test the Galaxy S26 Plus' photo quality, I put it up against the closest equivalent phones from Apple and Google — the iPhone 17 Pro max and Pixel 10 Pro XL. And for a location, I had the good fortune to be in Barcelona for MWC 2026, which provided numerous beautiful backdrops for my photography.

Let's begin with a main camera shot of Barcelona's most famous resident, the Sagrada Família. The Samsung's photo looks a little dull compared to the brighter iPhone shot, which also offers warmer colors to help bring the best out of this long under-construction basilica.

In this second main shot, this time against the Pixel and pointing at the Royal Palace of Pedralbes, we see the Galaxy is the brighter. However, it doesn't capture as much of the color as the Pixel does, making this golden orange palace look far less regal.

Moving to the ultrawide camera, we have this image, looking up at the back of Casa Batlló from its terrace. The iPhone shot is bright, but still sharp. The Galaxy's offering is a little dull and fuzzy, since it has to make do with a 12MP ultrawide camera rather than a 48MP or 50MP one like most other top-tier phones on offer have today.

Now we'll check out the zoom performance, starting with the 2x mode that the Galaxy S26 Plus offers built into its main camera.

This series of pillars at the Palau de la Música Catalana look dark through the lens of the Galaxy, which hurts both the brighter mosaic detail on the pillars and the visibility of the shadows compared to the iPhone. But there is better contrast in the brighter zones of the Galaxy S26 Plus' photo, letting you better appreciate the difference between the individual tiles on the pillars.

This zoom shot of an elaborate street lamp against the Pixel was taken with both phones' telephoto cameras. And we can see that the Pixel's pic is far warmer than the Galaxy's. The S26 Plus also suffers because of its lower 3x magnification, the Pixel's telephoto offers 5x, which means the Galaxy suffers on the detail front as well.

For our final rear camera comparison, I cranked both phones' main cameras up to their maximum resolutions (50MP for the Galaxy, 48MP for the iPhone) for this view down the north side of Montjuïc. In this hi-res shot, the Galaxy is the more saturated, helping bright elements like the pillars and towers further down the hill. It's also a little sharper than the iPhone's shot, more so than I'd expect for the small difference in their sensor resolution.

We finish with some portrait selfies, in which the Galaxy S26 Plus continues Samsung's streak of being the only flagship phone producer that consistently captures around glasses with its bokeh effect. The iPhone hasn't done a bad job here, and has depicted me with a more flattering skin tone, but the Samsung clearly remains the phone of choice for selfie-happy spectacles-wearers.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus: Performance

How powerful the Galaxy S26 Plus is depends on where you buy it. The model available in the U.S., and the one we performed our full benchmarking on, uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. However in most countries, including the U.K. where I'm based, the S26 Plus uses the Samsung Exynos 2600.

Samsung is proud of this chip, since it's the first smartphone silicon to be built on a 2-nanometre process, making it more compact than 3nm chips such as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 used in most other 2026 flagship Android phones, or Apple's A19 chips from the iPhone 17 series. But you may still prefer the Snapdragon edition.

The figures below show how, with a Snapdragon chip installed, the S26 Plus outdoes its two main rivals pretty handily. The only exception is single-core performance, where the iPhone wins, but not by much. The Exynos version still beats the competition on the same metrics, just not by such a high margin.

I was worried I'd have major criticisms of my Exynos-powered model because I couldn't get my current test game, Destiny Rising, to work without the phone crashing or freezing. When I finally got the game working after a full reinstall, it ran fine, although not as smoothly at max graphics settings as the latest Snapdragon phones I've tried.

The standard Galaxy S26 Plus comes with 256GB of storage, but you can spec 512GB if you want more room. Whichever capacity you pick, you also get 12GB RAM, a plentiful supply of memory for multi-tasking and AI applications, but perhaps one of the biggest reasons why the S26 series has suffered a price increase.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus: Battery life and charging

Samsung has left the 4,900 mAh of the Galaxy S25 Plus unchanged for the S26 Plus, which remains a little small for a phone of this size. Samsung manages to squeeze the most out of it though, with the S26 Plus achieving a 13 hour, 13 minute result in the TG battery test.

This is a reasonable result, but not a great one compared to the iPhone 17 Pro Max's 17:54 or the Pixel 10 Pro XL's 14:09. Samsung's other new phones don't help matters either, with the S26 Ultra lasting 16:10, despite having only a 100 mAh larger battery. Still, the Plus' battery life is still better than the vanilla S26 model, which lasted 11:28.

Happily Samsung does better on the charging front. The 45W wired charging fills the S26 Plus to 40% in 15 minutes and 71% in 30 minutes, which is faster than the iPhone (64% in 30 mins at 40W). 25W wireless charging is on offer too, but if you want the full Qi2 magnetic experience, you'll need to add a case to your S26 Plus.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus: AI and software features

Taking Android 16 as a base, the Galaxy S26 Plus runs on Samsung's One UI 8.5 skin, with Galaxy AI and its various features sprinkled over the top.

Building on previous Galaxy S and Z phones' previous AI tools, the S26 series has gained a handful of new features, such as Now Nudge. This pops up potentially useful information as you type, like events or reminders related to what you're discussing — kind of like an evolved version of the long-running phone ability to share 2FA codes directly from your email or messages. It's my favorite kind of AI — unobtrusive but ready to surface what you need when you need it.

Unfortunately, the Galaxy S26's new automated app actions tool with Gemini is not coming in the U.K. for the time being. But from what my American colleagues experienced of it, the under-development version seems promising, giving the user the power to hail ride share services or make food orders with just voice commands.

Other highlights from the Galaxy AI portfolio include screenshot categorization, the Photo Assist editing mode, that lets you make changes to your photos with text prompts, or the Creative Studio app for full image generation that you can then turn into custom sticker sets and invites. One of the most interesting however is one that could tempt you away from Google's Gemini and towards the much-maligned Bixby.

Now sporting a partnership with AI search product Perplexity, Bixby can adjust your device's settings on your behalf, or conduct web searches (via Samsung's own Internet browser app, of course) according to your questions. All stuff you'll have seen before with other AI services, but still nice to have built directly into your phone.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus: Verdict

I like to imagine the kind of person who would want to buy a phone as I wrap up a review, but I'm struggling with the Galaxy S26 Plus. It's not a case of it being a bad phone — it does everything you could ask of a premium Samsung phone. But the target audience feels very narrow.

On its face, the S26 Plus still looks like good value compared to other flagship phones available today if you're purely interested in screen space, even accounting for the higher price

For photography or battery life, the Ultra does it better, while also offering unique elements like its Privacy Display. For performance, or AI features, the standard S26 does all the same things as the S26 Plus, but for less money.

So I ultimately have to declare the Galaxy S26 Plus a good phone — but one I won't recommend right away to many people. The S26 Ultra's going to feel like a much greater upgrade whichever phone you're coming from and the standard Galaxy S26 is the better pick in terms of value.