The S26 Ultra is a phone full of trade-offs — but those trade-offs are probably a lot different than you might think. On paper, there are upgrades, downgrades, and a few things carried straight over from the previous generation. It looks nearly identical to the S25 Ultra and shares a lot in common with it, but the materials are different, the display is different, the camera system is different, and a handful of less obvious changes end up making a bigger difference than expected. The price has stayed the same for three years running at $1,299 USD. After spending time with it alongside the TORRAS Q3 VegSkin and OrigArmor screen protector, the good and the bad both came into sharp focus.

Lighter and Rounder, but Back to Aluminum

The S26 Ultra is the thinnest and lightest Ultra ever made at 7.9mm thick and 214g. The difference isn't dramatic just holding the phone, but Samsung made the corners slightly rounder this year, which does make it a bit more comfortable to hold caseless — though the edges are still sharp, which some people will like and others won't. The new pill-shaped camera bump looks cleaner, and the cobalt violet colorway is one of the best-looking phone colors in recent memory.

The catch is that Samsung switched from titanium back to aluminum this year. Combined with the new camera bump design, drop durability caseless is likely a step down from last year. Fingerprints and smudges show up easily on the back, making a case almost a given. Water and dust resistance remains IP68 — some brands have moved to IP69, but IP68 realistically covers almost any everyday scenario.

The Privacy Display Works, With a Real Cost

The headline display feature this year is the privacy screen, which works by narrowing the field of view so people around you can't see what's on your screen. It does work, but both settings come with trade-offs:

• Standard mode: Dims the screen slightly and makes it noticeably harder to see at an angle — but it's not a guarantee. Someone sitting right next to you can still make out the screen in some situations.
• Maximum privacy mode: Completely blocks anyone around you, but brightness drops significantly, black levels rise sharply, contrast goes flat, and the whole panel starts to feel more like an LCD than an OLED.

It's a genuinely useful feature in the right situations, but not something you can leave on all the time.

The screen itself remains excellent — it's an 8-bit OLED panel, not the 10-bit found in most other current flagships, but the occasional gradient banding issue from the S25 Ultra is completely gone this generation. Color and image quality are outstanding for everyday content. Pairing it with the TORRAS OrigArmor screen protector adds a seven-layer coating that cuts reflectivity to under 0.8%, which actually enhances the Ultra's existing anti-reflective coating rather than interfering with it — making the screen even easier to read in bright light.

One Lens Up, One Lens Down, One Unchanged

The main camera keeps the same 200-megapixel sensor from the previous three generations, but the aperture improves from F1.7 to F1.4. That opens up natural shallow depth of field without portrait mode and performs a bit better in low light — though overall results look fairly similar to last year.

The 5x telephoto was completely redesigned, switching from a periscope to a conventional lens — likely to keep the phone thin. The aperture moved from F3.4 to F2.9, which is a genuine low-light improvement. The trade-off is that the minimum focus distance is roughly twice as far, which becomes a real limitation when shooting close subjects.

The 3x telephoto still uses a 10-megapixel sensor, and that sensor is actually smaller this year — making it a marginal downgrade and the weakest of the three main lenses by a clear margin.

Horizon Lock Is Impressive, the Near-Lossless Codec Less So

The biggest video upgrade is Horizon Lock. With it enabled, you can rotate the phone a full 360° and the image stays completely level. The obvious party trick aside, the real benefit is exceptional video stabilization — it's like iPhone Action Mode on steroids, noticeably smoother in practice, and genuinely useful in the right shooting conditions.

The new near-lossless video codec is a more complicated story. Less compression and more detail sounds great on paper, but Samsung's heavy image processing pipeline is still running underneath — resulting in footage that looks over-sharpened and unnatural. For everyday video it's fine, but calling something "near-lossless" while baking in that level of processing is a contradiction. Storage is also a real consideration: one minute of footage comes in at over 6GB.

The Best Thermal Management on Any Android Phone

The S26 Ultra runs the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, specifically tuned for this device — which is why it edges out other phones using the same chip in benchmarks. Geekbench scores run roughly 12–16% higher than the S25 Ultra, though that gap is essentially imperceptible in real-world use across browsing, photo editing, gaming, and multitasking.

Where the performance story gets genuinely impressive is thermal management. A new vapor chamber keeps the phone remarkably cool even under sustained load — side by side with other current flagships, the temperature difference is significant. Overheating has been a recurring issue on past Ultra models, and this generation appears to have genuinely solved it.

Four AI Systems That Don't Talk to Each Other

The S26 Ultra runs Android 16 with One UI 8.5, and the overall experience is well-polished. Practical AI features like live call translation, call screening, and the document scanning tool — which can detect documents, remove fingers from the frame, and export directly to PDF — are genuinely useful.

The bigger issue is that Galaxy AI, Bixby, Gemini, and Perplexity all coexist as four separate systems with overlapping functions and different levels of system access. Perplexity and Bixby have system-level access to apps and settings; Gemini can handle things like booking rides or ordering food — but none of it feels cohesive. The density of AI features has outpaced most users' actual needs, and consolidating everything under one unified system would be far more valuable than continuing to add more.

Faster Charging, Longer Battery, Still No Magnets

Battery capacity stays at 5,000mAh — the same as the previous generation — but real-world endurance runs about two hours longer than the S25 Ultra, landing just short of two full days of consistent use. It still trails phones like the OnePlus 15 with silicon-carbon batteries over 7,000mAh by a significant margin, but it's more than sufficient for most people.

Wired charging jumps from 45W to 60W this year, hitting 0–50% in just 15 minutes. Wireless charging moves from 15W to 25W. The one persistent gap is that there are still no magnets built into the phone itself — meaning magnetic charging and magnetic accessory ecosystems require a case to enable. The TORRAS Q3 VegSkin fills that gap directly: its built-in 360° magnetic ring mount snaps onto any magnetic surface, enables wireless magnetic charging, and props the phone hands-free at virtually any angle. The organic silicone fabric texture is stain-resistant and pairs well with the phone's premium finish, with a microfiber interior that keeps the back scratch-free. Google added native magnets to the Pixel 10 this year — it would be a welcome addition on the Ultra.

One quieter upgrade worth noting: Bluetooth jumps from 5.4 to 6.0, bringing better security, improved performance in crowded environments, and location accuracy of around 10cm for tracking tags — compared to 100–500cm on Bluetooth 5.4. Wi-Fi 7 carries over from last year and continues to perform excellently.

A Meaningful Step Forward, Not a Reason to Ditch the S25 Ultra

S25 Ultra owners will find that the headline improvements — thermal management, Horizon Lock, and the privacy display — don't address everyday pain points strongly enough to make the upgrade compelling. For anyone coming from an older Ultra or buying into the lineup for the first time, the S26 Ultra is one of the most well-rounded Android flagships available right now. The 8-bit panel, aluminum chassis, and fragmented AI experience are the clearest areas left to improve — and at $1,299 for three years running, those are the things worth pushing on next.