The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra smartphone is here, and I have been lucky enough to be carrying it around since Galaxy Unpacked a few weeks ago. As always, Samsung brings a quality product to the hands of its constantly loyal users, even if they still aren’t reinventing the wheel. Iteration after iteration, Samsung makes a good phone, but they launch with flashy gimmicks and AI while continuing to leave hardware innovation behind. They are nothing if not consistent.
On first glance, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is beautiful. I love the updated design around the camera. It resembles last year’s Galaxy Z Fold7, which I really liked. It does still teeter when you place it on a surface, but I will survive. The colours this year are Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue and Black, with online exclusive colours Silver Shadow and Pink Gold. I got my hands on the Cobalt Violet, and though it is slightly prone to fingerprints, it is by far my favourite of the bunch.
The S26 Ultra is also a bit curvier than last year’s model, which looks really sleek—the frame, not the screen—with corners that are more rounded. Samsung has also brought the weight down from 218g to 214g, which saves my pinky! It features a 6.9-inch Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X display that reaches 120Hz and peaks at 2600 nits. I have never had a real issue with a Samsung display, but of all the devices I have tested in the last year, that is the lowest peak brightness. If this is where they choose to save money, though, I have no complaints.
“On first glance, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is beautiful.”
I have been using Samsung smartphones for most of my life, and have been reviewing them for the last five years or so. In those five years, I have said one thing over and over and over; they keep giving me the same internals every year, rarely making a change worth an upgrade. However, this year, while talking to the team about the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and the rest of the series, they seemed pretty aware that this wasn’t for people upgrading from the S25 Ultra, or even the S24 Ultra. They are thinking about customers finally moving on from the S22 Ultra or S23 Ultra, and this year, it makes a bit more sense.
So let’s talk about our internals. The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra runs on the newest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip for Samsung, which we have seen a few times this year. It consistently gets great results in benchmarks and the speed at which you can switch between apps. It’s a great chip, and a great upgrade from older devices. However, as I noted in my Xiaomi 17 review, I found my device getting hot, often. I am an avid TikTok watcher, and I take a ton of photos and videos and would regularly notice the top right corner of the S26 Ultra getting very, very warm, even after only 10-15 minutes of scrolling.
The S26 Ultra also features a few different configurations, with 12GB or 16GB of RAM and 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage, which is unchanged from the last few years, aside from the fact that there is no longer a 128GB/8GB RAM variant (thankfully). Again, we could use 16 GB, but 12 certainly suffices. Overkill isn’t always necessary, but it is nice to future-proof a device if you aren’t updating regularly. It will also come kitted with Android 16 and up to seven major upgrades, so again, great compared to older devices.
“I found my device getting hot, often.”
We have the saaaaaaaaaaame (yes, that many a’s) 5000 mAh battery that has plagued Samsung devices for ages. This is one of the areas where I just can’t make excuses or justify things for the company. Samsung and Apple are worlds behind, with the Xiaomi 17 base model featuring a minimum of 6330 mAh and the OnePlus 15 sitting at 7300 mAh. However, with the lack of battery upgrade, they did opt to improve their charging capabilities from 45W wired and 15W wireless to 60 W Super Fast Charging 3.0 and 25 W Super Fast Wireless Charging.
In practice, I wasn’t impressed with the battery on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. I often needed a charge midday, and if I didn’t, I was just barely making it to bedtime. For a device that is made for creators, that seems unacceptable to me. Charging was better than in the past, though, with about 25% battery for every 10 minutes of charging.
With creators in mind, it is time to talk about the cameras. Samsung has made some progress with the rear lenses on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. The 200 MP, f/1.4 wide lens is up from last year’s f/1.7, which hadn’t been changed since the S23 Ultra. The 50 MP, f/2.9 telephoto lens is also up from f/3.4 from the last several years. The 50 MP, f/1.9 ultrawide and 10MP, f/2.4 telephoto remain unchanged. As does the 12 MP, f/2.2 selfie cam, which I am just utterly angry about.
I get that creators are using their rear cameras for content, but anyone else is still using their selfie cam. In most devices we test here at CGM, 32 MP is the bare minimum for a front-facing camera in the last couple of years, and I hate to see it be one of the things that Samsung deems unimportant. As a mother, sometimes those selfies with my kids are the only photos I get, and they matter to me. They aren’t horrendous, but it would be nice to see them try, even a little, in this department, especially for their top model device.
As for the other lenses, I was impressed with the quality of the new telephoto lens. While in San Francisco, I was able to take photos of Alcatraz from a distance at various focal lengths. 1, 5, 10 and 20 times zoom allowed for some great detail. Even 40 and 100 times zooms were impressive, but definitely not clear, not that I expected them to be.
A big part of what Samsung boasted ahead of testing the Galaxy S26 Ultra was its ability to shoot in low lighting. Within reason, the results were decent. The selfie cam did not perform well in these conditions, and even the rear camera was often showing lens flares. I also struggled to get a decent, clear shot of the moon. All in all, images of my cat in a low-lit room were detailed and clear as they were brightened up, but outside at night, it didn’t feel like anything outstanding was happening.
Samsung also spent a lot of the Unpacked briefing talking about some cool features, and I have to say, I really like some of them. Photo features are a lot of fun, for one. Their AI capabilities have been above par, including allowing me to create a sea of hot pink Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra smartphones, add the Loch Ness Monster to San Francisco Bay, or complete an ice cream bar that someone had taken a bite of. I can’t say these are features I NEED, but they are certainly fun. The AI Eraser also does a pretty good job, and that can be really hit or miss.
The new built-in Privacy Screen is by far the most impressive and innovative feature on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra smartphone. Without needing to place one of those pesky screen protectors for privacy, Samsung has built in the same capabilities and offered you ways to customize it. Whether you want your screen to be unviewable from the sides at all times, when you open certain apps or just for notifications, it works flawlessly.
Now Brief is something that was available last year as well, and I was never able to get it to do much for me. The same goes this year. It offers me daily calendar updates, weather, some Spotify playlists, and the occasional news I don’t care about, as I don’t look at politics on my phone. I don’t see it as useful, but some might.
“The new built-in Privacy Screen is by far the most impressive and innovative feature.”
Now Nudge is a new feature that is supposed to keep an eye on your phone and make decisions based on what is going on. For instance, if someone is looking for photos from a specific event, it can prompt you and find them for you. In my case, this never came up, aside from once when I asked someone if the previous day was their birthday. It offered to add it to my calendar, which it did, but for the current day, not the day before. The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is even supposed to be able to order you an Uber now, but that feature wasn’t available just yet.
This year, the company took some small steps forward with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra smartphone, including bigger camera sensors and some innovative features. The Ultra series has always been a good device, but other companies have definitely been pushing boundaries further while Samsung continues to play it safe. They also continuously focus on AI features over hardware—like a better battery, or a selfie cam we can respect in 2026—which I am not sure everyone will care about.
While the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is still a very good smartphone, I hope to see them make bigger leaps in 2027. Last year, I was very impressed with the improvements to the Z Fold7; I would have fought to hold on to that one. I want to see Samsung be an outstanding smartphone, top to bottom, especially as one of the leading brands in stores and online, rather than just a “great phone, except for X” (and when it costs between $1899.99 and $2599.99 CAD).
