Galaxy S26 Ultra’s big feature this year is the Privacy Display. The newcomer debuted today, and we’ve found exactly what this display technology can do, its benefits, and caveats. Of course, this is a detailed coverage, so you’ll find everything about Galaxy S26 Ultra below.
This device is a bit thinner now. The chassis is visibly slimmer at 7.9mm, and the corners taper off slightly more than the S25 Ultra. Of course, the camera design has changed, possibly due to the larger aperture on the telephoto and main sensor.
Samsung's new Ultra mobile has the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (for Galaxy), and that’s for the entire global market. There’s no Exynos version for the Ultra. One UI 8.5 x Android 16 OS covers all the software basics and more. There are plenty of new AI features and enhancements.
The photo assist suite on the Galaxy AI makes the native Gallery app much more useful. The baked-in AI can categorize the screenshots for you. Creative Studio can make custom stickers for you or even generate wallpapers from your own photos.
AI Audio Eraser was meant to remove noise from calls, but it can now do much more on the S26 Ultra. It can also treat the media being played within the device on YouTube, Netflix, or social media. Call screening and on-screen scripts are generated and recorded by the handset.
Now Nudge has all the contextual info from your older conversations that comes up automatically during your chats. It pulls photos, addresses, and other data from your device based on the topic of your conversation. It’s a handy little feature.
Galaxy S26 Ultra has about 47% better light intake, as the main 200MP outsole changes the aperture to f/1.4. They still have a second 10MP telephoto next to the primary 50MP 5X periscope telephoto, with f/2.9 aperture. The images taken from that zoom lens are 37% brighter. And the ultrawide 50MP shooter is basically the same as last year.
The screen on the S26 Ultra is still a 6.9” Dynamic AMOLED of QHD+ resolution and 1-120Hz LTPO refresh rate. But there’s one unique upgrade that has everyone fawning over the Galaxy S26 Ultra. And that’s the anti-peeping Privacy Display.
Part of the screen has pixels that beam the light straight up from the display. So those pixels are only visible from the front, not the side. And the pixels can be activated individually. That means Privacy Display can block a portion of the screen, or a part that you actually want to hide. That could be a notification or a password input section. Or you can block out the entire screen from others’ view.
There is a caveat to this tech, though. The part that’s hidden from others also loses brightness and resolution. There are visibly bad viewing angles on the S26 Ultra compared to the older S25 Ultra. Privacy display is not perfect, but it does have potential for future devices after multiple generations.
There’s still an S Pen slot at the bottom. It has WiFi 7 and Ultrasonic fingerprint ID with dual speakers. The battery is 5,000 mAh, just like before. But they did upgrade the wired charging speed to 60W and wireless input to 25W. The Galaxy S26 Ultra (12/256GB) bumped its base cost to €1,450 (~PKR 477,000), just as we predicted. They’ve begun pre-orders for it. The actual sales will start on March 11th for the whole series.
