Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review: The topmost Android phone gets a new privacy feature. But should you upgrade?

The Ultra in Samsung’s Galaxy series has long made the leap from impressive to excessive, with massive displays, an arsenal of cameras, more power than most of us know what to do with, and more AI features than you can shake an S-Pen at! The Galaxy S26 Ultra (from ₹1,39,999) looks to refine that formula, packing in faster charging speeds, the latest silicon and some world-first display tech under the altogether too-subtle design changes. Oh, and AI agents, of course! But is it enough for the S26 Ultra to sit at the top of the Android food chain?

Last year’s S25 Ultra already had one of the best phone screens in the business, and this year’s Ultra has the same 6.9-inch, 3120x144-pixel resolution OLED panel, but with a flex so clever, I could totally see the competition copying their playbook. It’s called Privacy Display, and it’s an ingenious hardware and software solution to keep shoulder surfers—folks who sneak a peek of your phone in public—at bay. Turn the feature on and look at the phone less than head-on, and the screen goes very faint, almost fading to black if you’re sitting next to the person on a public commute.

On a crowded flight, in a cab, or while answering emails in a café, the screen essentially becomes yours alone. It’s interesting how it works—the phone has two sets of subpixels, narrow and wide, and only the former switches on when the feature is active, allowing the user to use the phone head-on with little impact on image quality or brightness.

Now, if you’re looking at your stock portfolio, bank statements or just about any content you’d rather others just shouldn’t see, there’s an extra level called Maximum Privacy Protection that drops contrast and luminance significantly even for folks using the phone, so it’s best reserved only for the one-offs.

Thankfully, unlike all-or-nothing third-party stick-on screen filters, Privacy Display can work on specific areas of the screen without impacting the rest, so you can enable it for incoming notifications/pop-ups, selected apps (like banking/UPI apps), for PINs or password fields in system apps (third party app support will arrive down the line), or even associate it with Routines so it runs only when you’re in the office or when you’re on your daily commute.

The price you pay for the privacy privilege? The S26 Ultra’s screen is an 8-bit display which uses something called frame rate control and its homegrown image engine (mDNIE) to display more lifelike colors, unlike some of the competition with true 10-bit panels—it’ll work for most folks, except for those sensitive to screen flicker.

Under the hood, Qualcomm has taken the top-tier Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip and given it a “for Galaxy” boost in clock speeds which, coupled with the larger vapor chamber cooling system, keeps temperatures in check even when you’re gaming, recording 4K videos, or using the phone as a wireless hotspot. You get 12GB of memory as standard and the choice of 256, 512 GB or 1TB storage, which makes OneUI and its bevy of new AI features fly on this device.

Take Photo Assist, for instance, which puts object erasers and generative AI-based image creation tools at your disposal within the photo gallery. Or Now Nudge, which tracks your messages on the screen and suggests relevant actions such as adding a lunch meeting into your calendar. I’m yet to try the more ambitious ‘agentic AI’ feature, where you can book an Uber, build a cart within Blinkit or order a meal in Zomato via instructions to Gemini using just your voice, as it rolls out in the coming months.

For now, the S26 Ultra ships with deeper integration with Perplexity AI, the Bixby assistant can point you to relevant settings or system apps when you ask it for help, and there’s Gemini AI underpinning the rest. I’m all for choice, but that’s three different AI systems at work in one phone, and it can sometimes be hard to keep track of what is available where, even for me.

It’s worth highlighting though, after two weeks of use, the difference a few grams and a few fractions of a millimeter (7.9mm) can make to the feel in the hand, which is considerably improved over its boxier predecessor. Samsung has achieved the weight loss via a return to aluminum after two years of dabbling with titanium frames, and the 214g weight is evenly distributed too, unlike its peers and their oversized camera islands.

Long time Ultra and Note owners will be relieved to hear that the S Pen is very much there, ready to pop out of the slot with an assured mechanical click. I’m not the biggest fan of the sizeable, pill-shaped camera hump and the inevitable wobble it causes on a flat surface, but the bigger bummer, design wise, is the lack of Qi2 magnets built directly into the phone for MagSafe-like charging (an optional case remedies both issues). And while battery capacity remains unchanged at 5000mAh, at least charging sees a meaningful upgrade, with wired speeds being bumped up to 60W (from 45W on the S25Ultra) as long as you show up with a compatible charger.

And while the sensors on the S26 Ultra haven’t changed since the previous model—a 10MP 3x telephoto, a 50MP ultrawide, a 12MP selfie shooter alongside a 200MP primary shooter and a 50MP 5x telephoto—the main camera and the telephoto see a bump up to larger apertures (f/1.4 and f/2.9) for better low-light sensitivity.

The results bear out the upgrades. In daylight, colors lean warmer and more saturated, detail preservation and dynamic range is excellent, while in low light, the main camera and 5x zoom kept noise under check. The ultrawide was satisfying to use, with good details and colors, but the 3x 10MP sensor has started to show its age. Still photos may not have seen the strides some of its peers have in the past years, but Samsung has given the S26 Ultra video some serious attention, with a new horizon lock stabilization to keep even very shaky footage looking smooth, a boost to night video clarity and the ability to record using the lossless APV codec at up to 8K/30 frames per second (if that’s your jam).

Verdict

In sticking to the tried-and-tested Galaxy formula, the S26 Ultra builds on its strengths—performance, software and the there-when-you-need-it S Pen—with a thoughtfully implemented privacy feature you won’t find anywhere else (yet!) and a strong focus on AI features. As refined and well-rounded as it is, the marginal improvements on still photography and battery capacity, particularly when compared to a slew of Ultras right around the corner, may give premium buyers some pause.