The Galaxy S26 series launch is a month late compared to what we had for the past few years – but no matter. We attended Samsung’s briefing for the entire S26 series and also the Galaxy Buds4 series – and we’re here to share what we know with you.
Here’s also the video form of what’s we’re going to talk about in this article. The video will show some of the features much better – so it’s highly suggested that you watch the video instead.
Streamlining
Samsung is doing quite a lot of streamlining this time around, and I kinda like it, honestly. The entire Galaxy S26 series will have triple models – the base, plus, and the Ultra like before – and they all share the same 4 different colors.
We have it in Cobalt Violet which is the hero color that also looks kinda greyish, Black, White, and also Skyblue. Personally, I think the Skyblue and Cobalt Violet looks good. As for the online exclusive colors, we have the Silver Shadow and also Pink Gold. I think Pink Gold would be a hot-selling color option but they’re not shown here.
Also, all the phones are using Armor Aluminium now. Good, it has better heat conduction compared to titanium.
Hardware and specs
Let’s talk about the hardware first. For the Galaxy S26 Ultra, we’re getting it in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 worldwide, whereby the base and the Plus will be in Exynos 2600 for certain regions. I am personally very interested to know how the Exynos 2600 performs and holds up against the test of time.
To learn more about the Exynos 2600 chipset, we did do another video – watch it here.
Other than the chipset change, Samsung also claims that it now has a better thermal architecture with a redesigned vapor chamber and repositioned TIM – thermal interface material a.k.a. thermal paste. No idea what was done exactly, and if this is applicable to the Ultra only or the entire S26 series.
While there are no details on what this thermal architecture changes, but we do know that the Exynos 2600 has something called HPB – also known as the heat path block. It literally is a block that creates a path for heat to transfer through.
Screen
The screen is a bit more fancy. I just want to quickly mention that the S26 is now larger at 6.3-inch, which explains why I kept getting confused with the Plus but honestly speaking, the small one is still very small in my hands at least.
Then, we have the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s exclusive feature – the Privacy Display. Yes, it’s real, and yes, it truly looks like magic. Samsung did briefly explain how they make this happen – and it’s by readjusting the subpixels to focus the light straight on and propagate in a cone shape. Basically, doing what a polarizer does but without a physical polarizer layer.
This is such a smart feature that is achieved by just adjusting the subpixels on the screen. Of course, it can also just do this privacy filter thing for just a part of the screen. It looks truly magical.
Charging speed
Okay, the charging speed. Samsung did upgrade it this time, but for the Ultra only. The S26 Ultra now can go up to 60W via wired charging, and Samsung claims it can charge from 0-75% in 30 minutes.
Samsung also showed us a brand new charger – probably using GaN (Gallium Nitride) since it’s quite a dense charger. Of course, I have to read the data on the charger as well to learn everything about it – and just as we’ve expected, this new charger is using USB-PD PPS standard. Good stuff.
Doubly also, Samsung showed us a new wireless charging puck too. This charger… It takes in 45W of power and only outputs 25W max. Yeah, wireless chargers are not that efficient.
Here’s also a summary to all the charging speeds across the entire S26 series. The base and Plus – if I’m not wrong – is the same as before.
Cameras
Let’s now talk cameras. They’re… basically the same, but the Ultra did have two changes. Two of the 4 cameras has a larger aperture now. The main camera now has an aperture of f/1.4 – 47% brighter, and the 5x zoom has an aperture of f/2.9 – 37% brighter. So, that means better night shots and faster shutter speeds – that’s it. The sensors are exactly the same.
But, the cameras do come with a lot of new features. First, we have the ProScaler to upscale pics and videos, and we also have something called the mDNIe. It stands for mobile Digital Natural Image engine that is used to detail enhancements.
Videography got a big upgrade, in my opinion. We have one feature called the Super Steady Video with horizontal lock. It’s basically mimicking what action cameras do by cropping the sensor to film at 1440p 60fps maximum, but we can literally shake the camera and rotate the camera 360° and the view is still completely stabilized. It’s crazy good! And yet this feature is available on the entire S26 series!
But specifically for the Ultra, we now have APV codec support and capture up to 8K 30fps. APV is an Advanced Professional Video codec, developed by Samsung as a royalty-free alternative to Apple’s ProRes codec. It’s a near-lossless codec but has a really good compression rate.
New software features
It’s now time for the new software features. The software has been updated to One UI 8.5 and highlights a few new stuff. There’s a new Creative Studio – you know that thing we use to utilize AI to modify by adding or editing parts of pictures we’ve taken. Not really sure what’s new, but we’ll test it out for sure.
Then, the Audio Eraser feature. It’s an amazing feature but now it works for 3rd party apps too. Samsung did say this audio eraser now works for Instagram and YouTube – which are good great choices so we can hear the videos clearly, but Netflix also supports audio eraser… I thought Netflix shows are professionally done? Why would we need the audio eraser feature here though?
The camera app has an enhanced document scanner mode now, which is alright I guess but I don’t think we can save it into a PDF file.
All screenshots are now automatically tagged and categorized into these few categories. I think this one is definitely handy as I am just really lazy when it comes to categorizing all the screenshots I took.
The Now Brief got updated with more personalized updates based on our usage, like auto suggesting to get an Uber or stuff like that.
The Now Bar will offer contextual shortcuts and adaptive recommendations as well – but too bad we didn’t get any demonstrations.
There’s a new feature called Now Nudge that suggests you text replies or screenshots or contact information or whatsoever. It’s actually really smart but again, no demonstration so I can’t really show anything. I do think this feature is exclusive to the Samsung Keyboard though.
One more feature that we have is the call screening with Galaxy AI. It will be our robocall to screen the calls for us and then transcribe everything for us to see as a summary. It supports 13 languages at launch.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any demonstrations for any of these features – but we’ll surely test them out and showcase it in future videos and articles.
Storage availability
The Galaxy S26 series will be have 12GB RAM for all models, available in 256GB and 512GB storage at least for our region – and the Ultra has 1TB as well.
Are you excited for the Galaxy S26 series?
And those are the main highlights that we have for the entire Galaxy S26 series! We’re going to update with more pricing information and pre-order bonuses and such – so stay tuned for all of that.
Are you interested to get one yourself?
If you’re interested in getting yourself a brand new Galaxy S26 series smartphone, check out the link down below.
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