Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Review: Phenomenal overall

Lately, I’ve had the habit of praising Samsung for its craftsmanship and innovation for its 2025 devices. However, I was left a little bored by the Galaxy S26 Ultra (S26U), aside from the Privacy Display. But after spending some time with the Galaxy S26U, I can easily say this is one of the best smartphones I’ve ever used. And this phone is the ultimate competition to Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra sports top-of-the-line specs, a solid design and an expensive price tag, which is slightly less costly than last year. While I’m in a lucky position of not having to buy a phone anymore due to always having a review unit, if I had to get a new phone for whatever reason, this phone would be at the top of my list – although I’d probably pick a phone that folds. 😅

Ultimate Privacy

Design-wise, the phone comes with new Privacy Display technology that prevents screen peeking. I’m notorious for this when I’m on the TTC. While I’m always looking to see what phones people have (the guy in front of me on my train has a Pixel 10 Pro Fold 😮), I’m also just nosy and will casually look at someone’s screen if presented, and sometimes you see some interesting stuff.

However, the S26U can prevent people like me from seeing what you’re doing on your phone. It can also hide your pin or passcode screens, your notifications, and even specific software like banking, notes, and dating apps. I use it with conditions to block my banking apps and pins. Samsung is working on a variety of ways of using this feature, so we might see it evolve over time to block half of your screen for multi-tasking, use AI to block when it senses people looking, or turn on the Privacy Display when you leave the house.

 

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More on the screen, it measures in at 6.9 inches, offers up to a 120Hz refresh rate, but can go as low as 1Hz when the higher refresh rate isn’t needed. It has a 3160 x 1440 pixel resolution that looks great for watching content.

The design is pretty standard for Samsung’s S Ultra phones, except it’s slightly thinner than last year’s model and gains a camera island. There’s still the S Pen that people love, and a bit of a downgrade this year as the phone moves from a titanium frame to an aluminum frame. I don’t know if it matters much, and I can’t tell the difference between the two; however, titanium is stronger and heavier, so that’s worth noting. (The S26U is a bit lighter than the S25U.)

The S26U comes in Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, Black, White, Silver Shadow, and Pink Gold.

Spectacular performance

The S26U is a powerhouse that uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and up to 16GB of RAM. My model has 12GB of RAM, and that’s definitely been good enough. I can write articles, play games, edit photos and videos, watch media, pretty much anything, without any hiccups. I’ve spent over an hour straight playing Elderand and Greak: Memories of Azur, and the phone doesn’t even get warm.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the S26U is great for games. The 8 Elite Gen 5 is a powerhouse, boasting a Geekbench 6 CPU benchmark single-core score of 3,573 and a multi-core score of 10,950, which is quite phenomenal.

Battery-wise, the S26U can survive longer than a day quite easily, depending on what you’re doing. On days I’m listening to music, scrolling through social media, and texting my friends, the 5,000mAh battery breezes through a day and pushes into the following day. On heavy use days when I’m watching a lot of YouTube videos, doing small video edits, taking a lot of pictures and videos, or playing a lot of games, the S26U gets to the end of the day. It’s not dead before going to bed, but it definitely needs a charge.

For instance, I went to the aquarium one day to test the camera and try out the new Ocean Mode, and by 3 p.m., the S26U was at about 59 per cent, and I took it off the charger at around 9:45 am. It still made it to the end of my day around 10 p.m., but all my time using the camera certainly put a dent in the battery.

Unfortunately, we’re also seeing a rise of handsets with massive batteries, like the OnePlus 15, which won MobileSyrup’s best battery life of the year. Plus, seeing what Apple can do with a 5,088mAh battery in the 17 Pro Max (runner-up for best battery), I asked Samsung why they don’t have bigger batteries in their devices, and their response was basically that bigger isn’t always better and it’s all about how the device uses the battery.

They also said the phone would need to be thicker to host the larger cell, but the OP15 is only 0.2mm thicker than the S26U, and is lighter, so I’m not sure I totally buy what Samsung said. Plus, the larger battery could be worth it for some. I work from home, don’t go hiking or camping, and tend to charge my phone before travelling, so the S26 Ultra’s battery is definitely good enough for me. But there are also better battery experiences on the market as well.

No MagSafe

The S26U isn’t all pros, and has some cons. Such as lacking MagSafe! C’mon, Samsung, I’ve grown to hate plugging in my smartphone to charge it. I’m being extra, but after using the iPhone 17 Pro Max and reviewing the Pixel 10 Pro, I’ve grown to love phones that offer magnetic charging, and for a premium handset like the Galaxy S26U, you’d expect the phone to have this technology.

All of the official Samsung cases have MagSafe built in, but then you have to buy a case; the phone should just have it.

Reliably Stable

One of my favourite aspects of the S26U is the camera experience. The phone features pretty much the same cameras as its predecessor, except its primary and ultra-wide cameras now have larger apertures, enabling them to capture more light for low-light photography.

I’ve really enjoyed taking pictures and videos on the Galaxy S26U more than most other phones. Images showcase such quality with a lot of detail, great colours, high dynamic range, and honestly just look so good with one caveat. I’m not liking how I look in some pictures — my skin looks lighter and washed out, depending on the lighting.

 

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I’ve taken a lot of pictures of people with various skin tones, and my Thai partner, for instance, never seems to have this problem. I’ve asked Samsung about their work with darker skin tones, and they told me it’s something they’ve worked on a lot and have tested their cameras on various skin tones.

I even got a little annoyed with Samsung, as over the years, it’s never something they mention, and I guess I know why. This is definitely something I think gets even worse when you take selfies, as I find the Pixel 10 Pro and the iPhone 17 Pro take more reliable selfies for my darker skin tone. As I said, it’s not always the case, and sometimes selfies have accurate colour, but it’s just not reliable.

 

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With the larger apertures, lowlight photography is improved, and it also looks great. You can see the phone offers more details than it has in the past. I haven’t gone to any concerts recently or clubbing, but I can see this being great. Samsung offers a new Ocean Mode for photos underwater. I tried using the phone at the aquarium, hoping to take advantage of the new mode, but it barely worked. There was another phone I used at the aquarium (that I can’t disclose for NDA reasons) that took preferable pictures and fixed the blue lighting, which is what I expected from the S26U.

I’m not really a videographer, but I’m trying to take more videos lately, and the S26U does a great job. I think my videos have been coming out impressively, and the stabilization from the S26U is phenomenal. I’m sure you’ve seen the Horizontal Log videos on social media, and it’s real; the phone can seriously make your videos look incredibly stable.

 

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The AI of it all

The total user experience on the Galaxy S26U was pretty comfortable. In my normal day-to-day, I didn’t use a lot of the AI features. Firstly, the agentic AI ‘Call me an Uber’ wasn’t available, so I couldn’t test that out. However, Bixby can actually perform this; it’ll ask you where you’re going and where you are. It’s not truly an AI agent, but it often works despite a few hiccups. Now Nudge, which essentially works like Google’s Magic Cue and would offer reply suggestions using AI, worked like a charm, though. Emails where people asked for my address would populate my address, people asking about my plans for the day would populate my calendar, and so on.

And Now Brief is improved from the S25U when it came out, and definitely offers more useful information, pulling YouTube videos I haven’t seen that I might actually want to watch from my subscribed playlist, offering music I might actually listen to, showing my best pictures I shot during the day, temperature updates and more. It’s not as useful as Now Nudge, honestly, but it’s an easy way of knowing the events on my calendar or the weather without having to pull up either of those apps. And the Finder search bar is now my go-to when I want to pull up settings quickly, like the Privacy Display, without having to first go into the Settings app.

I’m glad that Samsung’s UI has become pretty superb, in comparison to the days of TouchWiz. One UI 8.5 is a solid interpretation of Android 16, and while it really depends on your personal tastes, I’m pretty sure I like it more than Pixel’s UI, which is kind of crazy; it seems more useful, and you have more options – and the Pixel widgets can be a little annoying.

Dope as hell

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra is easily one of the best phones I’ve ever used. While it’s not perfect, it just works and nothing seems too difficult or confusing. Having Bixby, Gemini and Perplexity on one device is kind of overkill, but that just shows the number of options that are available on the device.

It doesn’t have the OnePlus 15’s battery, but takes better pictures, has a slimmer design and is sold at Canadian carriers. I prefer the selfies on the Pixel 10 Pro, and I always miss Now Playing when I leave the Pixel, but the S26U still offers great photography, a better battery, and is far more powerful. There’s give and take with just about any phone on the market, but overall, this is a solid package. It’s expensive (compared to those other devices), which is worth mentioning, but you’re paying to have a great phone, a jack of all trades and a master of some, and that might be worth it for some users.

Samsung’s 256GB Galaxy S26 Ultra costs $1,899.99, which again is an expensive pill to swallow, even if it is a bit more affordable than last year’s S25 Ultra. Samsung was offering double the storage for the same price, which is definitely a good deal, but if you missed it, you might want to wait for another sale.