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I've just spent a day with Samsung's nextG Galaxy S26 Ultra, their flagship phone for this year. And honestly, it feels like a very mixed bag. There's a few things that I was really excited for that are actually quite underwhelming in person. But then also some things that I did not see coming that have ended up as the real highlights. Like one thing that I could not wait to get my mits on is this new privacy display that stops people snooping on you. But actually using it, I've got concerns. So there are two types of pixels on this S26 Ultra's display. normal pixels that shine widely. This is why you can still read the screen from almost any angle. But then mixed into that are new narrow pixels which basically focus
their light directly outwards in a straight line instead of shining in a wide cone. Which means if we pull down quick settings and tap privacy display, this lets us turn off our normal wfiring pixels, leaving only the narrow ones on, turning this into a display that's only readable when you're looking at it head-on. And what makes this different from just sticking on one of those privacy glass screen protectors is you can then select exactly what this privacy effect is applied to. You can decide, for example, that you only want to turn it on when you enter your messaging apps like WhatsApp. And it does work. Privacy mode kicks in fast.
You can make it activate just when you're entering passwords or pins. And because it's being controlled on an individual pixel level, you can even have this privacy only apply to sections of the screen. Like if you just wanted to hide the notifications that pop up when people message you. So, this is useful, right? Uh, this almost feels a little bit like magic when you're seeing it for the first time. And really, it's one of the first truly innovative phone features that I've seen in a long time. But you might be wondering, cuz this is what I was wondering when it was being first explained to me, why bother then just blacking out that little notification pop-up? Why not just do the
whole screen? In fact, why not just keep privacy mode on as your new default and then just turn it off on the odd occasion that you want to show someone something? Well, the issue is because this works by effectively turning off half the pixels in your phone the moment you activate privacy display. You can see your screen's resolution taking a nose dive. While your screen does pretty effectively look almost unreadable to others, it also loses some readability and brightness cuz there's fewer pixels shining for you, too. But if that was where it ended, I'd still say, "Okay, it's a little situational, but what an awesome feature that I will almost definitely use sometimes." There's an
extra wrinkle that I noticed, though, and I'd be curious if other reviewers noticed the same thing. It's that even with the privacy mode turned off, the S26 Ultra's viewing angles look quite a bit worse than the S25 Ultra. Can you see how as we rotate these phones around, you get this pretty nasty blue tint on the new device, and the brightness falls off a lot faster. It's a little early to say for sure, but it makes sense that the phone would be like this because if half the pixels are now designed mostly just to fire light directly forward, then you're not really seeing those pixels anymore as you start to rotate the phone.
You're only seeing the remaining wide pixels. So, I need more time to test this before concluding, but I'm just not convinced that privacy display is a net positive for everyone in its current state. Thankfully, when you are looking straight on, the viewing experience is a step up. This is the first time on a Samsung phone that we're getting a proper 10- bit panel, which means the S26 Ultra can display a wider range of color. And you can also surprisingly notice the work that Samsung's put into their ProScaler, which is the image enhancement software that they have running in the background to smartly sharpen everything up. Like if we look at the same video playing on both the S26 Ultra versus S25 Ultra, the difference isn't even that
subtle. You can see, especially in the waves here, the clever sharpening really brings out the detail. So, while Privacy Display kind of looked like it was going to steal the show, but hasn't, the design feels like a whole load of nothing, that together has actually amounted to a large improvement to the way the phone feels. If you look at the corners, they're softer, more rounded. When you're holding the phone, you notice the sides curve a little more gently into the screen. The new phone's a touch lighter, and thickness-wise, we've gone from 8.2 mm to 7.9, making this S26 Samsung's thinnest Ultra ever.
They've even shaved down the S Pen to accommodate. None of this is revolutionary, but a handful of refinements that all feel like they're heading in the right direction, we take those. I also quite like how now, finally, the design of the Ultra matches the design of the S26 and S26 Plus. For the first time since the Ultra started, each phone in Samsung's lineup now has the same curvature, the same style of camera design, and exactly the same colors. Although it needs to be said, the reason that the new phone is lighter than the old one is because Samsung has just done exactly what the last iPhone did. They've ditched titanium and gone right back to the aluminium that their phones were always made of, which is a little awkward
considering how hard they sold us on titanium as if the material was God's gift to humanity. But ultimately, having used titanium phones, I don't actually care about the outcome. If anything, aluminium is more heat conductive, so will probably help the thermal performance. My only actual design complaint is these colors. Samsung, you have such a history of iconic, vibrant color options in the past. The aluminium you're now using is extremely easy to anodize and apply color to. Who hurt you? I don't understand why now you can't just have one interesting color that doesn't make me look like I'm living inside of a grayscale movie. Overall though, the design is a quiet little too quiet, but appreciated improvement. and cameras are
the same story. On first glance, they're the same picture. The resolutions are all the same. The sensors are seemingly identical to the last phone. But then you look closer and there's actually three important somewhat hidden improvements. One is shooting at night because while the sensors are the same, Samsung's widened the aperture of both the 200 megapixel main camera and the telephoto camera to let more light into those sensors. Plus, the software now can apparently anticipate the types of noise patterns that usually occur in low light. and preemptively eliminate them, which I was not expecting to amount to much, but if you keep an eye on my face during this video, you can absolutely tell the difference. The new phone
shoots brighter and with less noise. Second thing is a new addition to super steady mode called horizontal lock, which constantly calculates in real time how you're rotating your phone so that it can eliminate all that rotation from the actual video. Combine that with the very high levels of stabilization that you already get in this mode, it's pretty phenomenal. seeing how much this fixes your footage. And finally, the S26 cameras double down on what Samsung was already pretty good at, making you look pretty. Compared to the S25 Ultra, it makes you brighter. Your face pops more. Your eyes even have a little glint to them, and you're quite noticeably more detailed, too, without actually needing to shoot in a higher resolution. It's
better at controlling the really bright spots, like my forehead here. They don't look blown out anymore. And it's so good to see that this improved processing is also active on the selfie camera, too. And while it's at it, it improves the texture of your skin, but in a really clever, subtle way that doesn't look like one of those obtuse makeup filters. There are a few other minor camera changes, like how the autoframing mode now captures in 4K instead of 1080p, how they've swapped the lenses to reduce lens flares from bright sources, and how this is the first Samsung phone to support APV, which is a new type of very highquality video format whose unique perk is that it can be edited
many times with minimal loss in quality. But then again, if you're pro enough to actually need to use that, then are you not also pro enough to not keep trying to re-edit your exported file? You just go back to your original project to make changes and then keep 100% of the quality. Anyway, are these a respectable set of camera improvements? Yes. Do I think they're enough to suddenly catapult Samsung to the top of the smartphone camera ladder? No. Not even close. The general specs of the phone too, they're good. They're not exactly going to rock your world either. All Galaxy S26 Ultras will have 12 to 16 gigs of RAM and the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip. Great chip.
About 20% more powerful than last year. Terrible name. Like 8 Elite Gen 5 was 9 Elite Taken. The battery though, I thought this year for sure we had to get a bigger one. I was wrong. The S26 Ultra has a 5,000 mAh battery just like the S25 Ultra and just like the five other Ultras before it. It's like a family heirloom at this point. And it's just surprising, especially now given that every Chinese-made flagship now has 7,000 mAh plus. And Samsung clearly looked at that and decided, you know what, no, we're going to make our phone thinner this year instead. At least it does now support 60 W charging up from 45. So, in 30 minutes of charging, you can get this phone from 0 to 75%. And the phone does also now
support 25 watt wireless charging, which is great. But it's pretty upsetting that even now in 2026, the thing still doesn't have any magnets baked in like the iPhone and Google Pixels do. Which means that if you want to wireless charge without playing find the sweet spot for 5 minutes each time, you need to use something like the Taurus Q3 Veg Skin, our sponsor. Thankfully, this is literally my favorite case in the world cuz it feels so fancy. It gives you very strong magnets, and those magnets happen to also be part of a 360 rotating ring that allows you to prop the phone up basically anywhere. Or there's the Q3 Air, which has real airbags inside of it for protection from the more butterfingered among us. You
know who you are. And then to actually do the charging, their Polar Circle charger will give you the full 25 W, but with this new tech cooling system that doesn't just keep the phone cool, but literally ice cold. It will actually increase your performance instead of it usually going down when you charge. So, link below for all the Taurus stuff. So, so far we've talked a lot about what the S26 Ultra has. Not a whole lot new, but what does the S26 Ultra do? The software. cuz Samsung's making a decently sized hoo-ha about how this is the next era of phones that do things for you. There's some good, there's some not good. So, let's make it a lightning round. Screenshots are now automatically
organized. Each time you take one, this phone will scan the content and sort it pretty well, I might add, into one of eight categories so that when you remember you need it again, it's easier to find. What a no-brainer life upgrade. I love the new Finder. this tiny, very reachable button that sits on your home screen that takes you immediately to a search bar that you can use to find anything. And the very cool thing is, I'm told this will also be able to at launch search through past notifications. So, this could be the end of frantically searching through the 400 gifts and three separate arguments in your group chat just to find out where we're meeting for lunch again. Now, don't get too excited, but there's a new
Bixby. You might remember last year Bixby got better at being able to understand what you were trying to change and take you to just the right place in your settings to be able to do that. This time it can generate those settings right in front of you, including all the toggles that you might need to fiddle with to fix your issue without even needing to leave the app that you're in. And then if you still don't get what you're looking for, you can now string those requests together with internet searches seamlessly as if it's part of one continuous conversation because Bixby is now integrated with Perplexity AI. Got to say the handoff between the two feels very seamless, but just not sure yet if using these two are
actually better than just leaving the one default Google Gemini on as your assistant. Do you remember audio eraser? Samsung introduced it a couple of years ago as a way for you to reduce background noise in the videos you took. Well, now you can use that on any video you watch, too. So, if you're on YouTube and you're trying to focus on the person talking or singing, this button effectively shushes all the noise around them. And it's quite effective. There's improvements to AI photo editing. Now you can take a photo of something, but then use text to tweak it, like changing your plate of brownies to fruit to send to your trainer. Google also has a similar feature, but it's so
good here. It makes a change, but without adding any weird AI artifacts to your image. You can blend two photos together. So, if I bring in a shot I took of my mug to this image, life has been exciting recently. Look at that. The plate disappears. The mug comes in, it changes my hand position, even my head position to make that new image make sense. And you got a big selection of photo styles now, which again just work. So many companies have AI image editing that basically feels like it just draws a new image instead of yours. This feels like it properly studies the source you're feeding it to keep the result as true to it as possible. And you can now do a little bit more with this generative power thanks to
a new app, Creative Studio. I guess the idea is that so far AI image editing has just been well hey look you can make an AI image because social media. So this directs the AI towards creating you something that you might actually use like stickers or invitations or your next phone wallpaper but still using basic prompts. Great concept but am I the only one slightly creeped out by this childhood sketchbook mode? It's weirdly convincing but who's the demographic here? The only thing I can think is people trying to convince their hinge dates that they are in fact good with kids. Now, Nudge is a new feature that surfaces relevant information when your phone thinks you need it. So, let's say someone texts
where are you? It can pull up where you are and one tap will paste that in. Or at least that's what it should do. I tried to get this to work for like 30 minutes, but it was so inconsistent. Half the time it would suggest an answer that made no sense, and then half the time it would suggest no answer when it was definitely meant to. So, this might get better with updates. It will probably get better as the phone starts to learn about you. All I'll say is let's hope so. The S26 Ultra will also be able to organize your notifications based on priority and summarize them. Not available during my testing, but me personally, I don't want my notifications in any order,
but chronological. And we've already seen with Apple, trying to summarize notifications can create a lot more problems than it solves. And finally, the S26s can also in some context take action for you. So, for example, this can realize you're about to be late to a meeting and it will ask you if you want to have an Uber booked. All you need to do is say yes, which may sound very science fiction, and it kind of is in the UK cuz we don't actually get to the future yet. But seeing the state of now nudge, I don't feel like I'm missing out on too much. So, that's the S26 Ultra. I am starting my thorough testing as we speak. But first impressions, satisfied but not exactly excited.
