Samsung Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra: Specs, Features, Price, Release Date

I didn’t notice a change in screen quality, but there is a small reduction in overall brightness (it wasn’t a significant drop). Often with third-party privacy screen protectors, there’s a dramatic reduction in brightness, and the screen can sometimes look fuzzy, but Samsung’s solution neatly gets around those flaws. The benefits are immediately obvious. If you’re looking at sensitive work documents on a plane, you won’t have to worry about glances from the person next to you. Or maybe you’re having a private conversation in a messaging app—those notifications will be much more difficult for someone next to you to read.

Performance, Optimized

You’ll notice all three Galaxy S26 phones look visually identical this year. The Ultra isn’t as boxy, and Samsung says this was to make the entire series feel more cohesive. The cameras no longer float on their own on the back—instead, a glass module wraps around them. The Galaxy S26 Ultra now uses aluminum instead of titanium, which helps make the phone 4 grams lighter, and also allows the device’s color to shine through more consistently from the back to the edges.

Apple made a similar change from titanium to aluminum with its iPhone 17 Pro series, citing better thermal performance and a lighter smartphone. Samsung says that this is still the strongest version of its “Armor Aluminum” mixture yet, and the phone is also the slimmest Ultra it has ever made at 7.9 mm (a 0.3-mm difference from its predecessor). There’s also a new design for the vapor chamber cooling system, which helps dissipate heat much faster, for better sustained performance during processor-sucking tasks, like gaming.

Speaking of performance, Samsung says the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset “For Galaxy” goes further than previous collaborations between the company and chipmaker Qualcomm. It’s not just an increase in clock speed compared to other phones using the same chip, but there are deeper customizations that enhance everything, from camera performance to power management. If you want specifics, it’s a 19 percent faster CPU, 24 percent faster GPU, and 39 percent faster neural processing unit (NPU), the latter of which focuses on AI tasks.

On the battery front, Samsung has improved charging speeds, but that’s largely it. The Galaxy S26 Ultra can go from zero to 75 percent in 30 minutes, though you’ll need to buy a 60-watt charging adapter to take advantage. (Samsung, along with most smartphone manufacturers, stopped including the power adapter in the box several years ago.) There are no wired charging speed improvements to the S26 and S26+, though the latter model enjoys a wireless charging speed bump to 20 watts. The Ultra can now also charge at 25 watts wirelessly.

Unfortunately, Samsung still doesn’t offer built-in magnets for native Qi2 wireless charging capability. Unlike Google’s Pixel 10 phones, Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series remains “Qi2 Ready,” meaning you need to use a first- or third-party case with a magnetic ring for Qi2 charging speeds. Samsung is also still shying away from silicon-carbon battery technology that packs denser batteries without making the phone thicker, despite widespread use by its Chinese competitors. The OnePlus 15, for example, has a massive 7,300-mAh battery cell that lasts two full days of use, but the Galaxy S26 Ultra still taps out at 5,000 mAh.