Thanks to the magic of modern air travel (and sleeping while traveling), the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has arrived at GSMArena HQ and is straight in for review!
The unboxing isn’t surprisingly interesting – you get a USB-C cable and the phone, that’s all. We have a 12/256GB Cobeat Violet S26 Ultra.
The new phone may appear to be identical to its predecessor at first glance, but it is not. The S26 Ultra is a little longer and wider, but it’s also thinner and a little lighter. The design is also a little different because of the little camera island. It’s a personal choice whether you like the new or the old, but we’re fans of the new design.
The big new feature in the Galaxy S26 Ultra is the privacy display. It uses pixel-level lighting control to reduce screen visibility at an angle. Technically, it uses Flex Magic Pixel technology to direct light per pixel, reducing visibility at off-angles.
It’s really impressive, and we haven’t seen anything like it in the office before. Now, whether this is a useful feature or not is up to you as the user. Turning on the feature dims the entire display a bit, which is a bit detrimental to usability.
privacy display
Talking about the display, it is excellent. It’s less reflective than your typical OLED, which isn’t new, but is still somewhat exclusive to the Galaxy S Ultra models. The panel on top is also flat, and feels excellent to use.
In retrospect, things feel unchanged. The camera system is basically the same – there’s no larger sensor, for example. The biggest change is to the main camera’s lens aperture – it’s now f/1.4 instead of f/1.7 – and the 111mm zoom camera has an f/2.9 lens instead of f/3.4. But these are not major changes.
Of course, we’ll be testing the cameras thoroughly, so stay tuned.
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra 5G
| 256GB 12GB RAM | ₹ 139,999 |
$1,299.99 |
| 512GB 12GB RAM | ₹ 139,999 |
$1,299.99 |
| Show all prices | ||
