Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra hands-on review: privacy gets a pixel-level upgrade
The world's first Privacy Display on a phone is here — and we've ever tested
Pros
✅ 🔒 Built-in Privacy Display — no stick-on film required
✅ 🤖 Galaxy AI is more agentic: book a cab with a single voice prompt
✅ 📸 Wider apertures + APV codec = a serious upgrade for video creators
✅ ⚡ Super-Fast Charging 3.0 hits 75% in just 30 minutes
✅ 📐 Slimmest Ultra design yet at just 7.9mm thin
✅ 🔭 39% NPU boost means AI features run seamlessly in the background
✅ 🎨 Unified color lineup across all three models — Cobalt Violet is my favorite
Cons
❌ 🧲 No MagSafe or PixelSnap-like feature
❌ 💰 Starts at $1,299 — same as the S25 Ultra, but trade-in deals help
❌ 🖋️ Still no S Pen Bluetooth — a loss carried over from the S25 Ultra
❌ 📸 Standard S26 and S26+ don’t get the wider apertures or APV codec
Hands-on with the Galaxy S26 Ultra
I’ve spent a few hours with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra at Unpacked in San Francisco, and if last year’s S25 Ultra was the phone that made me care about AI, the S26 Ultra is the phone that makes me trust it. Samsung has quietly shifted from flashy AI party tricks to something more ambitious: an AI that acts for you, before you even ask.
Let me break down the two things that surprised me most — and a few things that left me wanting more.
🔒 Privacy, at the pixel level. The S26 Ultra is the first smartphone in the world with a built-in Privacy Display — and unlike the peel-off privacy film you can buy on Amazon for $12, this one is integrated into the display itself. When you activate it, the pixels literally change how they disperse light, keeping your screen crystal clear for you while blurring it out for the person craning their neck next to you on the subway. I tested it under the bright conference lighting in San Francisco, and the effect is dramatic — from straight-on, the display looked as vivid as ever; from even a mild side angle, the screen became unreadable. It works in both portrait and landscape.
🤖 AI that does things — not just says things. Samsung has been building toward agentic AI since the S24 series, and the S26 Ultra feels like the moment it clicks. With Gemini as your agent, you can ask it to book a taxi — it handles the entire workflow, surfaces the confirmation, and asks you to tap once to confirm. That’s it. During our demo, it worked exactly as described. The S25 Ultra’s AI was impressive at cross-app commands; the S26 Ultra starts to feel like having a capable assistant who already knows your apps.
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review… so far
📸 Wider apertures change everything in low-light. The main camera on the S26 Ultra gets wider apertures — meaning more light hits the sensor. In a darkened room at Unpacked, photos looked noticeably brighter and sharper than what I remember from the same shots on the S25 Ultra. This is a real, visible improvement.
🎬 APV codec is a big deal for creators. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is the first Galaxy phone to support APV, a professional-grade video codec that Samsung describes as “visually lossless.” It’s designed for creators who edit repeatedly — the footage doesn’t degrade with each pass through an editor. If you shoot and edit a lot of video, this is the most compelling hardware upgrade Samsung has offered video creators in years.
🔭 50MP ultra-wide gets autofocus. The 200MP main camera gets the aperture upgrade, and the 50MP ultra-wide also gains autofocus. For anyone who has ever been frustrated by a blurry ultra-wide close-up shot, this is a small but meaningful fix.
⚡ Super-Fast Charging 3.0 is genuinely faster. The S26 Ultra charges at up to 60W via wire and hits 75% in around 30 minutes. The S25 Ultra was already quick at 45W, but the S26 Ultra shortens downtime meaningfully for a phone with a 5,000mAh battery.
📐 Slimmest ‘Ultra’ Samsung has ever made. At 7.9mm, the S26 Ultra is the thinnest Ultra yet. It’s nowhere near as thin as last year’s S25 Edge (5.8mm) or the iPhone Air (5.6mm), but it also doesn’t make concessions on hardware.
🧲 MagSafe is MIA –you’ll need a case for that. It’s disappointing that Samsung hasn’t included a magnetic back on the S26 series phones. I love Apple’s MagSafe and Google’s PixelSnap, which make wireless Qi2 charging easier and allow me to snap my phone to this compact tripod (Amazon link) that I recommend to everyone. Samsung told me they chose to have the thinnest Ultra phone possible, and magnetic cases are in stock if you want this feature.
🐉 Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. This is where Samsung's flagship phones excel over other Androids. It not only includes the latest Qualcomm chip, but it basically overclocks performance to ensure the S26 series feels snappier while the redesigned vapor chamber dissipates heat more efficiently from the sides of the processor rather than just below it.
🧠 39% NPU boost is the real performance story. Samsung is leading with CPU numbers (up 19% vs S25 Ultra) and GPU numbers (up 24%), but the NPU jump of 39% is what powers always-on Galaxy AI features. That’s the stat that matters most for the AI-forward experience Samsung is building.
📱 Now Nudge actually understands your messages contextually. If a friend texts asking for photos from your trip to New York, Galaxy AI surfaces those photos from your Gallery without you ever opening it. I asked Samsung’s team how it handles privacy and was told the photo analysis happens on-device.
🧹 Photo Assist lets you describe edits in plain English. Instead of tapping through menus, you just say what you want — “make it night” or “remove the stain on my shirt.” Samsung has also added the ability to change outfits in photos using Galaxy AI, and edits can be reviewed step-by-step and undone at any point. It feels more like a conversation than a photo editor.
🔍 Circle to Search now handles multiple objects at once. Samsung upgraded Circle to Search with multi-object recognition — circle a full outfit and it identifies the jacket, the shoes, and the bag simultaneously. For fashion shoppers, this is a genuinely useful upgrade over last year’s one-item-at-a-time approach.
📞 AI Call Screening is now proactive. An unknown number calls. Before you answer, AI Call Screening identifies the caller and summarizes why they’re calling. I didn’t get to test this in a live scenario, but Samsung’s demo showed it filtering a clear spam call instantly. It’s the kind of background-AI feature that most people will use without thinking about it.
🛡️ Privacy Alerts watches apps watching you. The S26 Ultra uses machine learning to alert you in real time when an app with device admin privileges is trying to access sensitive data — your location, call logs, or contacts — unnecessarily. Samsung is positioning this as “privacy at a system level,” not just a display-level trick.
🔐 Post-quantum cryptography extends to firmware. Samsung extended its PQC work to software verification and firmware protection on the S26 Ultra. This is future-proofing against quantum computing-era attacks, and it’s quietly one of the most enterprise-relevant features on this phone.
🎧 Galaxy Buds4 are a natural companion. The new Buds 4 series pairs with the S26 Ultra so you can invoke AI agents hands-free. The Buds 4 Pro adds Head Gestures just like the AirPods Pro 3 — nod to accept a call, shake to decline — which sounds gimmicky but worked smoothly in our demo.
📄 Document Scan gets smarter. AI-powered Document Scan now removes distortions like creases and fingers automatically, then organizes multiple scans into a single PDF. This is one of those features that sounds minor until the moment you need to scan a crumpled receipt at an airport.
🎨 Cobalt Violet is the color to get. All three models share a unified design language and color lineup: Cobalt Violet, White, Black, Sky Blue, and Samsung Store exclusives in Pink Gold and Silver Shadow. Cobalt Violet is the standout — it reads as sophisticated rather than loud.
🌈 Creative Studio unifies creation and customization. Starting from a sketch, photo, or text prompt, Creative Studio can generate stickers, invitations, or wallpapers without switching tools. It’s Samsung’s answer to the question: “What do I actually do with generative AI on my phone?”
📡 Bluetooth 6.0 on Ultra and S26+. The standard Galaxy S26 makes do with Bluetooth 5.4. The Ultra and Plus get 6.0, which brings improved connection stability and is better suited for the growing ecosystem of Bluetooth audio accessories.
🖥️ ProScaler on Ultra and Plus only. ProScaler enhances image scaling so photos and videos appear sharper and more detailed on the screen — but it’s limited to the Ultra and S26+. Standard S26 users miss out.
🔋 5,000mAh battery — same as before, but faster to fill. Samsung hasn’t increased the battery size since the S22 Ultra era. The S26 Ultra’s advantage is efficiency: the more powerful NPU runs AI tasks without hammering the CPU, and Super-Fast Charging 3.0 makes the capacity less of a concern.
🎮 GPU up 24% — gaming and video capture benefit most. Samsung specifically highlighted gaming and video capture as the key use cases for the GPU boost. In the brief gaming demo I saw, the frame rate looked smooth even in demanding scenes, though real-world sustained performance testing will have to wait for our full review.
🌙 Enhanced Nightography extends to selfies. The AI ISP improvements that have historically improved the rear cameras now extend to the 12MP front camera. Natural skin tones and finer detail in mixed lighting — tested under the varied lighting conditions at Unpacked, the selfie results looked noticeably cleaner than what I recall from the S25 Ultra’s front camera.
🎯 Horizontal lock in Super Steady video. Video Super Steady has a new horizontal lock option that keeps the frame level even when you’re moving fast — useful for action sports or just walking while recording. It’s the kind of stabilization feature I’d use constantly.
🤝 Bixby is more conversational this time. Samsung says you can now navigate settings and adjust your phone using natural language — no need for exact command phrasing. I asked Bixby to “make the screen a little dimmer” without using the word “brightness,” and it understood. Small win, meaningful progress.
🧩 Perplexity joins Gemini as an agent option. Alongside Bixby and Gemini, the S26 Ultra supports Perplexity as a selectable AI agent, set up via a single button press. For users who prefer Perplexity’s real-time web-sourced answers over Gemini’s broader task execution, this is a welcome addition.
📅 Available March 11 — pre-orders open now. Pre-orders are live at Samsung.com, Amazon, Best Buy, and major carriers. Samsung is offering up to $900 off with eligible trade-in, or $150 Samsung Credit toward accessories without a trade-in.
⚙️ Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra specs
📆 Release date: March 11, 2026
💰 Price: From $1,299.99
📺 Screen size: 6.9-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X
🏃♂️ Refresh rate: 1–120Hz adaptive
💡 Brightness: 2,600 nits peak
📸 Main camera: 200MP Wide AF
📸 Ultra-wide camera: 50MP Ultra Wide AF
📸 Telephoto cameras: 50MP (5x) / 10MP (3x)
🤳 Front camera: 12MP Wide AF
⚙️ Chipset: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy (3nm)
🐏 RAM: 12GB (256GB/512GB) / 16GB (1TB)
🗄️ Storage: 256GB / 512GB / 1TB
🔋 Battery: 5,000mAh
🔌 Wired charging: Up to 60W (Super-Fast Charging 3.0)
⚡ Wireless charging: Up to 25W
📶 Connectivity: 5G (sub6 + mmWave), Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, UWB
📐 Dimensions: 78.1 x 163.6 x 7.9mm
⚖️ Weight: 214g
🌈 Colors: Cobalt Violet, White, Black, Sky Blue + Pink Gold and Silver Shadow (Samsung.com exclusive)
🤖 OS: Android 16, One UI 8.5
💦 Waterproof: IP68
Full review coming after we spend more time with the Galaxy S26 Ultra ahead of its March 11 launch. Pre-order deals and trade-in offers are live now at Samsung.com.
The white variant looks great