Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Review: There's a Catch

Display Technology and Trade-offs
📌 The new display features a Privacy Display that instantly limits viewing angles by turning off wide-angle pixels, leaving only narrow-angle ones.
📉 Activating the Privacy Display cuts the effective resolution in half, leading to blockier text and less fine contrast.
📉 The display is slightly worse overall in regular use due to half the pixels having permanently poor viewing angles because of the focusing lenses.
🔢 The device still uses an 8-bit display simulating 10-bit color, a trade-off despite many competitors offering native 10-bit displays.

Design and Ergonomics Changes
📐 The phone features a slightly thinner, lighter, and rounder corner design, making it look like other flagships.
✒️ The rounded corners cause the S Pen slot to have a slight curve, meaning the S Pen can only be inserted one way, unlike the previous flat design.
📉 The larger camera plateau combined with a thinner body causes the phone to rock significantly on a table when typing without a case.

Performance and Battery Life
🚀 The new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy shows performance scores similar to competitors, with expected 20–30% CPU improvements year-over-year.
🔋 The phone has slightly better battery life than the previous generation due to a more efficient chip and software, despite retaining the 5,000 mAh battery.
🔌 Charging speed peaks slightly faster at 60 watts, but the lack of Qi2 magnets and silicon carbon batteries is noted as a missed opportunity.

Camera System Updates
📸 Key camera hardware upgrades include a bigger aperture on both the main and 3X telephoto lenses, allowing more light in.
🎞️ Software-enabled features are significant, including the addition of the APV log codec and the Horizon Lock stabilization feature.
🦾 Horizon Lock utilizes the 200MP sensor to crop in and shoot ridiculously stable Quad HD video up to 60 fps.
📸 A trade-off is the worse minimum focus distance on the main camera, impacting close-up macro capabilities.

Galaxy AI Features Assessment
🤖 The device is loaded with AI features such as call screening and Audio Eraser for noise removal in videos.
🤔 The reviewer is not convinced that the numerous AI features are a compelling reason to purchase the phone, suggesting they could arrive via software updates on older devices.
🚫 Features like Now Nudge were reported as non-functional during testing, and the AI text-based photo editor reportedly refused several attempted edits.

Base Model Value Proposition
📉 The base S26 and S26 Plus models are deemed not good deals due to minimal design changes and retained camera specs since the S23 series.
💸 The removal of the 128GB option raises the price of entry to a $900 baseline, which the reviewer feels offers poor value compared to other phones available at that price point.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ Every feature is a trade-off, exemplified by the Privacy Display reducing resolution and brightness in exchange for on-demand privacy.
➡️ The Privacy Display is a genuinely useful hardware innovation, allowing selective application to specific apps or notifications.
➡️ Users should be aware that the slightly thinner, rounder design negatively impacts S Pen insertion orientation and causes device instability on flat surfaces.
➡️ Performance is evolutionary, but Samsung focused heavily on the NPU for AI features, suggesting future development emphasis.
➡️ Consumers may need to vote with their wallets to push Samsung toward implementing features like Qi2 magnets or superior battery technology in future flagships.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Mar 07, 2026, 06:13 UTC