Samsung has unveiled the latest iteration of its S-series flagship camera phones. The S26 Ultra now offers one of the brightest apertures available on a current smartphone, drastically improving its low-light capabilities. Elsewhere, it got a long-rumoured improvement and now boasts the world’s first built-in privacy display. Alongside some rounding out of its square-edged design, there’s now a camera island instead of the individual lens rings.
The 200MP main and the 50MP 5x telephoto cameras received an upgrade and now have a brighter aperture, f/1.4 and f/2.9 from the previous f/1.7 and f/3.4. This will open up new possibilities for night photography; it might even claim the top spot on our list for the best smartphones for night and low light. The ultrawide, 3x telephoto and selfie camera specs remain unchanged, but the selfie unit now benefits from the ISP improvements that bring better skintone rendering and overall finer details.
And it doesn’t just stop at stills, the 8K30p video is complemented with a new Enhanced Nightography Video mode to assist in low-light video capture. Furthermore, an upgraded Super Steady function stabilises footage even during fast-paced activities. In potentially interesting news for creators, the S26 Ultra also supports APV, Samsung’s own lossless pro-grade video codec that allows for cinematic quality video recording. The S26 Ultra is the first (and only) phone to use this codec, so it’s worth noting that Samsung do provide a disclaimer about playback on devices that don’t support this codec. No doubt, you’ll be able to use the industry standard codecs instead on default settings.
To support demanding tasks, a new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor is on board with an improved Vapor Chamber to keep temperatures at bay during recording and multitasking. Charging has improved too, promising to deliver 75% charge in just 30 minutes.
Let’s take a look at the flagship Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, with the key differences highlighted (in bold) over the S25 Ultra.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra features:
- 50MP f/1.9 ultra-wide-angle camera with AF
- New: 200MP f/1.4 main camera, OIS (with 2x optical quality zoom)
- New: 50MP f/2.9 5x telephoto camera (with 10x optical quality zoom)
- 10MP f/2.4 3x telephoto camera (uses a smaller sensor)
- 12MP F/2.2 selfie camera with AF (same on all models)
- UHD 8K 30fps video
- 6.9-inch screen, 1-120Hz, 2600nits, with Corning Gorilla Armor 2
- Armor aluminium frame, 5000mAh battery, with 60W wired charging
- 78.1 X 163.6 X 7.9mm, 214g
- Snapdragon® 8 Elite Gen 5 processor
- Price $1,299 / £1,279 (256GB)
The Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus
The phone community is always abuzz when a new Samsung Ultra comes out, but what about its smaller siblings? Looks like both the S25 Plus and S25 were a bit forgotten when it comes to upgrades. They offer the exact same cameras as last year’s Samsung Galaxy S25/S25 Plus. Once again, the main update seems to be the new processor. There are only some incremental upgrades to the smaller S25, with a slightly bigger 6.3-inch screen (from 6.2-inches) and a 4300mAh battery up from 4000mAh. It’s worth noting that the 128GB option has disappeared from the line-up with all models starting at 256GB.
Samsung S26 Plus features:
- 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle camera
- 50MP f/1.8 main camera , 2x optical quality zoom
- 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera , 3x optical zoom
- 12MP f/2.2 selfie camera
- 6.7-inch screen
- 4900mAh battery
- $1,099 / £1,099
Samsung Galaxy S26 features:
- Same camera setup as S25 Plus
- New: 6.3-inch screen
- New: 4300mAh battery
- $899 / £879
