Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra hands-on: Surprisingly big upgrades

If you're wondering where most of Samsung's effort went with this year's flagships, look no further than the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. While you may not notice much difference at a glance, there are plenty of upgrades this year — especially underneath the surface.

Samsung has done a lot of tinkering with the phone, making it thinner and lighter than last year's model. All while offering improvements to staple hardware like the display, vapor chamber and camera. But there's also been emphasis on making your phone easier and simpler to use, with a little bit of help from AI, of course.

Galaxy S26 Ultra HANDS ON | Biggest Upgrades vs. S25 Ultra - YouTube

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Updates to Bixby (yes, Bixby is still here) let the AI act as a device agent capable of understanding and controlling your device. So if you're not sure how to use specific features, Bixby can fill in as a middleman. Photo Assist also lets you edit all your photos and videos using prompts, rather than being forced to do it all manually.

The most intriguing upgrade for most will be the Privacy Display, which purposely blocks content from prying eyes, and it's customizable Those are just a handful of upgrades that Samsung has added to the S26 Ultra.

We've only spent a short amount of time with the Galaxy S26 Ultra so far, but I did come away from my hands-on session rather impressed with some of the additions Samsung has made this year. Here's my pros and cons so far.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra price and release date

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is available to pre-order now with a March 11 release date. Prices start at $1,299 / £1,279 / AU$2,199 for 256GB of storage, and in some regions pre-ordering will net you double the storage at no extra cost.

Color options available include Cobalt Violet, Black, Sky Blue and White. These will be available at major retailers that carry Samsung phones. Samsung's online store will also have two exclusive color options, Pink Gold and Silver Shadow.

Samsung Care Plus has also been upgraded to include coverage for device theft and loss, unlimited repairs and worldwide coverage. Samsung has confirmed it will also be able to use Knox security to remotely lock down and block any missing devices.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra specs

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra design and display

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra retains much of the same design language of the Galaxy S25 Ultra but it rounds off the corners more so it has a more unified look with the rest of the S26 lineup.

Samsung's also ditched the protruding camera lenses on the back cover, in favor of a Galaxy Z Fold7-inspired camera bump. I'll admit I did like the old design, but the new translucent camera deco looks fairly smart — even if it does mean there's a little more of a camera bump.

Once again, Samsung has made the Galaxy S26 Ultra thinner and lighter than its predecessor. So you have a phone measuring 6.44 x 3.07 x 0.31 inches and weighing 7.55 ounces. That's 0.01 inches and 0.4 ounces of difference compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and while the difference isn't going to be immediately noticeable, it ensures the phone remains comfortable and easy to carry.

The 6.9-inch OLED display is mostly unchanged in terms of the core specs. You have the same 6.9-inch display, offering QHD+ resolution, a 1-120Hz refresh rate and the super-durable Gorilla Glass Armor 2.

Samsung has confirmed that ProScaler has made a comeback with updated algorithms and technology, which is supposed to make the screen sharper and more vivid, while enhancing finer details and offering four times the number of colors.

The display also comes with a new anti-reflective coating to reduce glare from bright lights. While this is successful, during my time with the phone the brightest lights in the room were still visible — albeit with a rainbow-like light scattering effect.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra privacy display

Samsung has added an optional Privacy Display to protect sensitive information on your screen. This sounds a bit strange at first, but it's honestly very impressive in action. The mode can be toggled on manually or set up to turn on automatically when sensitive information may be on screen. The S26 Ultra then switches off the viewing angles from every direction except head-on, preventing bystanders from seeing what's on screen.

The default mode doesn't block off everything, and if you look closely, you can still see some elements on screen. Which is where the "maximum privacy protection" option comes in. During my time with the S26 Ultra, it managed to black out everything that would otherwise be visible from the side.

Frankly, this is the kind of feature other phones should steal.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Galaxy AI features

It wouldn't be a new Galaxy phone without additions to Galaxy AI, and according to Samsung, artificial intelligence is one of the main tenets of this year's devices. In fact, from the sounds of things, Samsung is pushing AI into all corners of the phone.

One of the big changes is that Bixby is taking on a role as an AI agent, with the ability to control and understand your phone. The idea here is that Bixby becomes a teacher, helping you learn and understand how your phone works — aided by more advanced large language models and conversational capabilities. You just need to know what you want done, and Bixby will be able to handle it for you. That includes searching the web.

Galaxy AI also powers even more editing and sharing options, including the new Photo Assist feature. Like Google Pixel 10's Conversational Editing, this allows you to make changes to your photos using prompts. The results are surprisingly impressive, and a little unnerving as a result. Prompts can also be used in the Creative Studio app to make certain kinds of content in multiple styles, including stickers, greeting cards, invitations and wallpapers.

The biggest new feature is arguably the new Now Nudge feature. We haven't had a chance to test this out for ourselves yet, but Samsung promises that it'll be more proactive than the Now Brief and Now Bar.

The idea is that it will make suggestions based on what it sees on screen. It also offers the ability to ask questions and look across your entire phone at the push of a button. Plus, there's the ability to find and group photos together, based on the context you provide. That sounds pretty exciting to me.

Now Brief itself is set to be powered by a new personal data engine on your device this year. This offers better analysis, which leads to more personalized updates based on your habits and routines.

Another intriguing AI feature is Automated app action, which will leverage Gemini to perform tasks on your behalf. So you can order an Uber with just your voice and Gemini will get to work, and you can see the process in action or just do other things in the background while it's happening. Apps like Instacart and Doordash could be next.

Other AI features of note include news that Audio Eraser is coming to third-party apps, including Netflix, Instagram and YouTube. It'll also be available as a quick panel settings option. A new AI document scanner will also be able to clean up scanned documents, and automatically organize them together — which sounds a little bit like Pixel's Screenshots app for documents.

Circle to Search, a long-time staple of Android phones, will also gain the ability to recognize and search for multiple objects at the same time — while also gaining the ability to ask questions directly. However, experience tells me that this won't stay a Samsung-exclusive feature for long.

Finally, Galaxy AI is also getting the ability to screen calls, asking callers who they are and what they want. It's not a unique feature, but it's good to see this available on even more phones.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra cameras and video

If you only look at the megapixels on the camera, you might be fooled into thinking the S26 Ultra hasn't changed anything since last year. But Samsung promises that this is actually the best and brightest camera system it's made so far.

The main 200MP lens has a larger f/1.4 aperture, instead of the S25 Ultra's f/1.7, which allows even more light to enter the camera. Samsung says that this means photos are 47% brighter, and it is especially beneficial for low-light video and photo capture. The larger aperture will also work in tandem with an enhanced AP that can reduce noise instantly — further improving low-light capabilities.

The 50MP telephoto lens (with 5x optical zoom) is also said to be 37% brighter than the S25 Ultra, and features a 10x "optical quality" digital zoom. Meanwhile, the 50MP ultrawide and 10MP telephoto lens (3x optical) remain more or less unchanged.

The 12MP front camera now features upgraded technology previously limited to the rear cameras. That means enhanced AI image signal processing and an object-aware engine that shows more true-to-life photos. So your selfies will show how you actually look.

Samsung has ripped a feature straight from the best action cameras in the form of Horizontal Lock. This locks your camera orientation to vertical or horizontal, no matter how much the phone actually moves around. with up to 360-degrees of auto correction. I actually spun the phone around in a full circle, only for the camera to remain completely static — which is mighty impressive.

The S26 Ultra is once again capable of recording in 8K resolution at up to 30 frames per second, and includes support for Samsung's advanced professional video codec. The company claims that this will offer a lossless video experience after multiple edits. Recording at 4K resolution includes auto-framing, and thanks to a combination of the 8K sensor and AI processing, is supposed to be able to film without a loss of image quality.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Performance

While the Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus are powered by the Exynos 2600 in the UK, the Ultra comes packing the custom Snapdragon flagship once again. The overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy is likely to be much more powerful than the standard chip — though we haven't had a chance to benchmark it yet.

Samsung claims we'll see a 39% rise in NPU performance, 24% better GPU and 19% CPU compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra. There's also a redesigned vapor chamber that promises to be 20% better at heat dissipation, in part thanks to newly repositioned thermal interface material.

The phone is also backed up by 12GB of RAM on the 256GB and 512GB models, while the 1TB comes with an increased 16GB.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra battery and charging

The battery in the S26 Ultra has the same 5,000 mAh capacity as its predecessors. However, all is not lost, and we expect that the extra efficiency in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy will offer some extended longevity.

Charging power has increased to 60W from 45W, and Samsung claims you can get to 75% power in 30 minutes. That's 10% more than what it promised for the S25 Ultra. Meanwhile, Qi2 wireless charging has risen to25W speeds, albeit without the built-in magnetic ring.

Reverse wireless charging is still available, which I tested with a pair of the new Galaxy Buds 4 Pro.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra outlook

Initially, I felt as though the Galaxy S26 Ultra was another iterative upgrade, and in a lot of respects, it is on paper. Despite this, Samsung has pushed through a lot of great changes and upgrades that could prove to be genuinely useful — and are likely to be promptly copied by some of the competition.

The Privacy Screen is the standout security feature on the S26 Ultra. Likewise, the camera's horizontal lock is not a wholly original idea, but it is a novel idea for a smartphone that could prove very useful.

The rest of the phone's hardware looks solid, too. We've got a potentially major performance boost from the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, and the larger camera aperture should offer major improvements to photo quality — especially in low-light conditions.

The main question we have right now is whether the phone is actually worth upgrading to. Many of these AI features may make the jump back to older devices, and as impressive as the hardware upgrades are, it's not clear whether it's worth paying $1,299 for. We'll just have to wait and see how the Galaxy S26 Ultra performs once we can put it through some in-depth testing. Stay tuned for our rated review.

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