Alright, now it’s time to talk about the brand new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. The reason why I’m doing this review later is because… well, many other people already got their hands on it and the internet is already flooded with content relating to the S26 Ultra. So, I took my time to test it out and offer something unique. Well, at least I think it’s unique. I hope you think so too.
Screen
We’ll start by talking about the screen first since this is the biggest controversy. Not just big, but there are actually two controversies around the internet at the time of this recording.
But, let’s talk about the specs first. It is a 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a resolution of 3120×1440 pixels and goes up to 120Hz refresh rate. It can go up to around 1370 nits in auto brightness and goes down all the way to around 0.9 nits. Up to this point, it is practically identical to the previous generations.
As for the color gamut coverage and color accuracy, with the default vividness level 1 settings, it can 99.42% of sRGB and 83.14% of DCI-P3. The ΔE number is also very low – it’s basically identical to the previous generations too.
When we turned up to vividness level 3 in the settings menu, I expected it to cover virtually 100% of both sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts too – but unfortunately, something changed. It can cover 100% of sRGB but only 96.55% of DCI-P3… I know that 3.45% isn’t going to make much of a difference, but what happened? Why is it not covering 100% of DCI-P3 like the previous generations? I mean, even the S26+ can score 100% in both sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts.
Privacy Display
One exclusive feature with the S26 Ultra is the new Privacy Display feature. We can just head into the quick settings panel and turn it on – then busybodies from the side can’t see what’s on the screen. It’s a super handy feature to have.
It basically is shooting lasers directly to your eyes so that people from the side can’t really see what’s on your screen.
We did make another video about this already – you can check it out at the top right corner for more information, but as a summary – turning it on with “maximum privacy” enabled will cut down the brightness and absolutely destroy the color accuracy too. That’s why I advise you to only turn it on for notifications and certain apps.
If you don’t enable maximum privacy mode, then the viewing angle is actually quite huge – which kinda defeats the purpose of a privacy display, in my opinion.
But… remember the two controversies that I mentioned earlier? The first one is the downgraded anti-reflection on the S26 Ultra. Yeah, this is very well-documented and I can confirm that it is true. Last time, reflections on a bright light – like our studio lights – will create a purple spot. No idea why it’s purple, but it’s the same on other desktop monitors with the same anti-reflection technology.
Anyway, the new S26 Ultra is not that good and it will create a white spot instead. It’s not as reflective as any other phones in the market, but still – it’s worse than the S25 Ultra and the S24 Ultra, for that matter. I personally don’t care much about this since I slap a screen protector on it anyway, and that reflects light anyway.
We talked more about the privacy display in another video, so watch that video here.
The second controversy is a bigger one, I’d say. I don’t know who is the one who started saying that the Galaxy S26 Ultra will have a 10-bit display, but it stuck and everyone kept saying it has a display with 10-bit color depth. But please, so many people have the phone in their hands already – just check it for yourself. Never assume because assume makes an ass out of u and me.
From here, the app is called Display Tester by the way, will show you this information. You see RGBA_8888? Yeah, it’s an 8-bit display and the screen can display 16.7 million colors, which is way less than what a 10-bit color depth display can output.
A lot of people complained that 8-bit displays has color banding issue but I don’t think so since my desktop monitor looks amazing with 8-bit color depth too. Look, I don’t know and I personally don’t have any strong opinions about this, but I do believe whoever “leaked” and “claimed” and a 10-bit color depth display is “confirmed” for the S26 Ultra is the problem.
All in all, S26 Ultra has an 8-bit color depth display. Does it matter? Yes, but not to me.
Performance
The performance is not something that I’ll talk much here. The S26 Ultra is powered by the longest name that a chipset can have today – the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. Tested in performance mode – which should allow the chipset to already go full throttle – is not really that powerful.
First off, Genshin Impact. At the max settings, it can well on this phone – much better than some of the other Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 devices I’ve tested before. The frame rate is stable.
Zenless Zone Zero, which is a much more demanding game than Genshin Impact, it ran fine at first… but there is an unfixed issue for the past month that still persists today. It will highly likely crash when there’s a chain attack. I have no idea when this issue will get fixed, but it is an issue that happens on Snapdragon devices regardless of graphical settings. We’ve reported to HoYoVerse directly since it affects so many players around the world – even there are people reporting this issue in our comments section too.
And finally – Wuthering Waves. Yes, it can take in about 10W sometimes and I’d say it’s actually quite low in this case, since Wuthering Waves is a really demanding game. Mostly due to the lack of optimization but that’s a story for another day.
But you can see that the frame rate is just not that good. It has stutters and frame drops everywhere, but the S26 Ultra is actually better performing than some of the other Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 devices that we’ve tried before.
We have a lot more games in our gaming tests, and you can watch all of them in our full gaming test here. We also did a comparison with the Exynos 2600, and you can watch all of those videos down below.
And as a quick addition, since I also just did some emulation tests with the S26 Ultra – I do believe that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy is somewhat different compared to the standard 8 Elite Gen 5 to the point that custom drivers don’t work properly. Again, not sure what’s wrong – but that’s what I discovered.
Battery life
Now, one massive improvement is the battery life, despite it being the same 5,000mAh battery. No idea what the Wh value is – but Wh is always better than mAh in terms of measuring a battery’s capacity. Video at the top right corner to know why.
Anyway, I’m happy to report that when we’re not gaming, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy is superb in terms of battery life. I only tested at 1440p because why would you use 1080p on this phone???
And using our standardized battery life test, the Galaxy S26 Ultra lasts around 17 hours and 20 minutes. So, let’s take this number and compare it with the previous generations.
Doing some math and calculating the power consumption, there is a massive 10% efficiency improvement over the Snapdragon 8 Elite – double the improvement over what the previous generation had, and I’m glad. Every other chipset company needs to take note of this – especially Samsung LSI with the Exynos chipsets.
Charging speed
The other improvement is the charging speed. It can now take in 60W wired fast charging via USB-PD PPS, and it should charge that tiny 5,000mAh really fast, right? Actually, yes. For this test, I did the charging test from 5% to completion instead.
The result? Really good. It takes around 47 minutes to charge, all that while the S26 Ultra actually only takes around 53W maximum. Looking at the temperature graph, the highest temperature is only at 40°C. Usually, brands will let the battery hit 45°C before throttling the charging speed.
What I mean here is that Samsung could let S26 Ultra take in more wattage and the battery charge faster and it will still be at a safe temperature. Still, less than 50 minutes to charge from 5% to completion is a really good improvement, particularly since Samsung embraces USB-PD PPS charging standard, the same charging standard as many laptops use.
Funnily enough, Samsung doesn’t have the option to enable the “maximum charging speed” option in the settings menu because it is already at maximum charging speed by default. Instead, we can disable fast charging in the settings menu.
Software
Now, the software. The S26 Ultra comes with One UI 8.5 with Android 16 out of the box, but I don’t want to talk about it much here since there are many new features added. Perhaps another video in the future so we can explore more features instead of making this one section of the review supremely long.
One new addition that I think is supremely useful is the Audio Eraser, which now supports some third-party apps like YouTube, Instagram, and Netflix. Honestly speaking, it is very effective and for it to work with apps like YouTube is great. If a YouTube video has terrible audio, then just turn on the Audio Eraser on our side so we can hear properly.
Samsung did mention to us that many other third-party apps will be added in the future, so let’s see what other apps can utilize this feature.
Camera
Now, the cameras. There are many people who said that the cameras changed this time, but all I see are arguments online, and there are no concrete facts. For all I know, the aperture of the main and 5x telephoto camera is now bigger.
I also saw that the 5x telephoto camera now uses a different lens tech to achieve the 5x zoom, but that affected the minimum focus distance – hence we can’t take macro shots like this anymore. Yes, I can confirm that this is indeed the case – and that’s why I can show you this comparison.
Now I have to say, I’m not really a good photographer of any kind. I just take random pictures, and I rarely even post pictures online. I do think that the S26 Ultra’s pictures are a lot brighter this time around and also lean towards a slight blue hue for its white balance. Again, I don’t have much pics taken with the S26 series because I was busy testing the performance and such.
One thing I do have to note is that the digital zooms are not aggressively reconstructed with AI, and that might be a good thing. I mean, I can still somewhat read the sign with this 50x zoom, and yet the details aren’t garbled up by AI. However, at 100x zoom… yeah, I can’t read a single thing.
To have a look at all the pictures and videos taken with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, watch the video at the top of this review.
Design
Then comes the design. I think the S26 Ultra has a pretty standard design as it is now slightly more rounded than before, and it looks and feels a lot better than the previous generation.
Every time I see the S Pen, though, I cringe. Why is it placed at the corner? If we place in the S Pen in the wrong direction, this happens. It’s not a big deal since it won’t damage anything, but it sure is annoying that we have to make sure the S Pen is inserted the right way every time. I also understand why Samsung did this, as parking the S Pen at the far edge means it can maximize the area available for other components. Not like Samsung took advantage of that anyway, since the battery capacity is the same.
The camera bump got a change in design, and I personally like this design more than the S25 Ultra’s camera circles, as cleaning is a bit easier. It’s only a bit easier because the gaps are tiny.
There are also a total of 4 standard colors, as shown here. I personally like both Cobalt Violet and Sky Blue, though I have not seen both online exclusive colors with my own eyes yet.
A few more things to mention
And a few more things to mention about the Galaxy S26 Ultra. It has a USB 3 port at the bottom as usual, and it can also output display signal via that USB 3 port, so we can use Samsung DeX on the big screen.
Of course, dual SIM card slots too – at least for our region.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra?
So, should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra? Well, do you think the privacy display and the battery life improvement are important? If yes, then okay – get the S26 Ultra. That privacy display is still the best new exclusive hardware-level feature on the S26 Ultra that competitors will take time to integrate into their devices.
Plus, in my opinion, One UI is still my personal favorite Android skin. I absolutely cannot live without Modes and Routines for all the automation, and Samsung Wallet for all the features it has.
The price of the S26 Ultra is definitely higher than the previous generation – at least for the Malaysian retail price, there is a small price hike. At least it’s not as bad as the base S26 and the S26+, but it’s still a price hike nonetheless.
But, if you don’t care about the privacy display… then listen further. One UI 8.5 is currently on the S26 series only, but I do believe that all of the new features will come to the previous generations as well. So maybe consider getting the previous generation S25 Ultra if the price is right. You only have 6 years of software updates remaining, but that’s still a super long time.
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great sharing and beautiful honest opinion on this.