Samsung Unveils Game-Changing S26 Ultra
Samsung Galaxy S26 Series: I have got the spec papers here. So, I’m going to put it all together, and we’ll still have a first look together at what seems like a kind of interesting new set of phones from Samsung.
And so, as expected, the designs, well, they’re very similar to last year with just some somewhat new colors and a bit different-looking camera ring with this little extra plateau around them now.
The S26 Plus is $1,100, while the S26 Ultra is $1,300. So this comes with a bump up in base storage. So if you remember last year, the S25 launched at $799 and was 128 gigabytes.
This year the S26 is $8.99, but it’s also 256 gigabytes. But then also the S26 Plus is 256 gigabytes, and it’s 100 USD extra. It’s 1,100 instead of 1,000. And then the Ultra was 1300.
It’s 1300 again. You know, they’ve always come out with the fan edition.
later in the year as, like, the mid-range priced version of the phone, but it feels like they’re making room for that now to be like an $800 phone. So, just a lot of price creep happening in this lineup.
So, then, if that’s the context for these new phones, then what is genuinely new to justify this increased price? Well, they all got the spec bump we expected. Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy.
We’ve seen this non-Galaxy version of the chip be fantastic already. And there’s a lot of chatter about NPU optimization for AI stuff on the Samsung one. More on that in a minute, but it looks like a decent chip.
And then the Ultra, particularly, is also a slightly revised design. So, it’s a little bit thinner now and a little bit less boxy and squared off. It’s also returning to aluminum sides instead of titanium.
And they’ve modified the vapor chamber to fit in this slimmer design. And there’s also now somewhat faster charging across the lineup. Nothing remarkable, but 25 watts on the S25, 45 watts on the S26
Plus, 60 watts on the Ultra. And then pretty much all the rest of the hardware modifications are simply on the Ultra, which now has slightly wider apertures on the otherwise unchanged primary and telephoto cameras just to let more light in.
So, it looks like we’re going from f1.7 to 1.4 on the main and f3.4 to 2.4 on the 3x. Pretty small hardware modifications, I would say.
Yet no magnets and yet no silicon carbon batteries. But there is one really fascinating feature to me, and it’s unique to the Ultra Phone, and it’s the new privacy screen feature.
So I was seeing leaks of this. I didn’t want to check into it too much, but now that it’s genuine and I’ve seen this, at least the footage of it, it looks fantastic.
So you know those privacy screen protectors people put on their phones to kind of block others from seeing what’s on their screen? You’ve undoubtedly seen one on someone else’s phone at some point.
They look kind of terrible. So instead of the privacy screen protector, which is unpleasant and also always on, this is a
hardware-level control over the pixels on the display that can be turned on or off whenever. And when you turn it on, the display should look unchanged from straight on, but as you get off-axis, it actually fades to gray and almost dark from both the horizontal and vertical axes.
So, you’re still seeing a normal display from the straight-on view, but anyone trying to look over your shoulder or sitting next to you will see practically a blank screen. That’s actually extremely sick. And hey,
I’m not going to judge why you need this or what you’re blocking on your screen. But there is actually a very good amount of customization over how exactly this works or when you can use it.
So you can turn it on or off, obviously, which is already sick, but you can also have it automatically activate in particular regions or for certain apps, like just for your banking app or just for your photographs app.
It can even be elements of the screen. So simply for the password box while you’re writing in a password
Somewhere, it will just black out that, or just for the top portion of the screen where notifications come in, it will do just that.
I just think this is fantastic. This also, to me, if you think about it, is like the most Samsung thing ever. Like Samsung, for the previous several years, as we know, has been incredibly conservative with these like flagship phones, especially with the design.
But they’re also the same firm that did totally weird stuff like the Galaxy Note Edge back in the day, where
Like one side of the display bent over the bezel for the first time, and then that turned into the other Galaxy S edges where both sides melted over.
They produced the Galaxy Note first, which is this gigantic display, and then, of course, the Galaxy Fold, which is incredibly early and hazardous.
And now they have a literal trifold, which is nuts. And all these things, all these insane ideas that they decide to explore, are all centered around display advances.
So curved screen, waterfall screen, folding screen, multiple folding screen, and now this privacy screen.
So, like, this feels like a very Samsung thing to attempt and hope it catches on because I know if any other brand was trying this, their followers would all be loving it, too.
I just hope this finds some popularity in the Ultra and then begins making its way to other phones because it’s sick.
So then most of the rest of what’s new in this S26 lineup is, I mean, you’re going to see advertising with it. I’m guessing much of the keynote is going to feature a lot of this.
It’s AI features, and they range from somewhat useful to full-on crap. Like they’re just trying a bunch of stuff.
They managed to clone over some of Google’s biggest successes from the Pixel, like call screening, which is welcome.
They also included their own version of Magic Q, which they’re calling Now Nudge, which basically lives in the keyboard and provides you recommendations of things to pull in from other apps. It’s context-aware.
It should be decently helpful. And there are also some big claimed enhancements with Bixby now being LLM powered.
We’ve seen some other companies struggle with that lately, but you know, with more Gemini integrations and some new Perplexity integrations, it may be decent.
I mean, I’m not going to say anything till I try it, but you know, the new Bixby may be nice. But then they also built something called Photo Assist, which is essentially what Google did with Google Photos.
It’s like AI photo editing but incorporated into the gallery, which is interesting stuff.
I don’t know if it’s selling any phones. It’ll presumably require a software update for older phones, but they did that. They also developed a Creative Studio, which is kind of the same thing as Apple’s image playground.
Borderline pointless in my perspective. But as I said, it feels like they’re simply throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall in the world of AI just to see what will stick and see what people would enjoy.
Uh, they’re really calling it an AI phone in some of the press stuff that I’ve seen for it, which I don’t love. I feel
My impression is the Ultra feels like a little bit of a refresh, and it’s a cool spot to attempt this privacy screen thing. I’m quite thrilled to see it in person and check it out. Looks pretty sick.
Uh, the base phone’s going up by 100 bucks. Not too excited about that. appears like they didn’t attempt a whole lot of other stuff with those phones.
Uh, but let me know what more you want to see in the full reviews in the comment section below. And of course, get subscribed to watch the
Let me know what you think. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
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