Samsung Galaxy S26/Ultra Impressions: 1 Crazy Display Feature!

Yo, what's up?

MKBHD here, and welcome to what was supposed to be your first look

and hands-on with the new Samsung phones this year.

Unfortunately, that is in California, and it just snowed like two-plus feet here,

and that shut down all the flights for like two days.

So, I'm still here!... and that's still in California.

Thankfully, Brandon from the team did actually get all the way out to California

from a city that got way less snow.

And so he's seen the phones, and he shot the footage of them,

he sent it back to me.

I've got the spec sheets here,

so I'm going to put it all together

and we'll still take a first look together... at what looks like a kind

of interesting new set of phones from Samsung.

And so as expected, the designs—well,

they're pretty similar to last year with just some slightly new colors

and a slightly different looking camera ring with this little extra plateau around them

now.

But actually, the first thing

that stuck out to me is just the new prices.

Typically I'll just save

that for the end

because it's the same

as last year,

but not this time...

This time, the S26 is $900, the S26+ is $1,100,

and the S26 Ultra is $1,300.

So this comes with a bump up in base storage.

So if you remember,

last year the S25 launched at $799 and was 128 gigs.

This year, the S26 is $899, but it's also 256 gigs.

But then also, the S26+... is 256 gigs and it's 100 bucks more.

It's $1,100 instead of $1,000...

And then the Ultra was $1,300, it's $1,300 again.

You know, they've always come out with the Fan Edition later in the year

as like the mid-range priced version of the phone,

but it feels like they're making room for

that now to be like an $800 phone.

So just a lot of price creep happening in this lineup.

So then if that's the context for these new phones,

then what is actually new to justify this new price?

Well, they all got the spec bump we expected:

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy.

We've seen this non-Galaxy version of the chip be excellent already,

and there's a lot of talk about NPU optimization for AI stuff on the

Samsung one.

More on that in a minute, but looks like a good chip.

And then the Ultra specifically is also a slightly updated design,

so it's a little bit thinner now

and a little bit less boxy

and squared off...

It's also back to aluminum sides instead of titanium,

and they've redesigned the vapor chamber to fit in this thinner design.

And there's also now slightly faster charging across the lineup.

Nothing dramatic, but 25 watts on the S26, 45 watts on the S26+,

and 60 watts on the Ultra.

And then pretty much all the rest of the hardware changes are just on

the Ultra,

which now has... slightly wider apertures on those otherwise unchanged primary

and telephoto cameras just to let more light in.

So looks like we're going from f/1.7 to 1.4 on the main

and f/3.4 to 2.4 on the 3X.

Pretty modest hardware changes, I would say.

Still no magnets and still no silicon-carbon batteries.

But there is one... really cool feature to me,

and it's just in the Ultra phone, and it's the new Privacy Display... feature.

So I saw leaks of this;

I didn't want to look into it too much,

but now that it's real

and I've seen this— at least the footage of it—it looks incredible.

So, you know those privacy screen protectors people put on their phones to kind

of block others... from seeing what's on their screen?

Probably seen one on someone else's phone at some point...

They look kind of horrible.

So instead of that privacy screen protector, which is annoying and also always on,

this is a hardware-level control over... the pixels on the display

that can be turned on

or off whenever.

And when you turn it on... the display should look unchanged from straight on,

but as you get off-axis,

it actually... fades to gray

and almost black... from both the horizontal axis

and vertical axis.

So you're still seeing a normal display from the straight-on view,

but anyone trying to look over your shoulder

or sitting next to you will see basically a blank screen.

That's genuinely really sick!

And hey, I'm not gonna judge why you need this

or what you're blocking on your screen,

but there is actually a pretty good amount of customization over how exactly this

works or when you can use it.

So you can turn it on or off, obviously, which is already sick,

but you can also have it automatically enable in certain locations

or for certain apps,

like just for your banking app or just for your... photos app.

It can even be parts of the screen...

So just for the password field, while you're filling in a password somewhere,

it will just black out

that... or just for the top part of the screen where notifications come in...

It will do just that.

I just think, I think this is awesome!

This also to me, if you think about it, is like the most...

Samsung thing ever.

Like, like Samsung for the past couple years, as we know,

has been super conservative with these like flagship phones, especially with the design...

But they're also the same company that will try absolutely insane stuff,

like the Galaxy Note Edge back in the day where like one side of

the display curved over the bezel for the first time,

and then that turned into the other Galaxy S edges where both sides melted

over.

They did the Galaxy Note first, which is this huge display,

and then of course Galaxy Fold, which is super early and risky.

And now they have a literal tri-fold, which is nuts!

And all of these things,

all these crazy designs

that they decide to try are all based around... display innovations...

so curved screen,

waterfall screen, folding screen, multiple folding screen, and now this privacy screen.

So like, this feels like a very Samsung thing to try,

and I hope it catches on,

because I know if any other company was trying this,

their fans would all be loving it too...

I just hope this finds some success in the Ultra

and then starts making its way... to other phones,

because it's sick.

So then, most of the rest of what's new in this S26 lineup is—I

mean,

you're going to see commercials with it.

I'm guessing most of the keynote is going to have a lot of this...

It's AI features and they range from decently useful to... full-on slop.

Like they're just trying a bunch of stuff.

They managed to clone over some of Google's biggest hits from the Pixel,

like call screening, which is welcome...

They also added their own version of Magic Queue, which they're calling now Nudge,

which basically lives in the keyboard

and gives you suggestions of things to bring in from other apps.

It's context-aware; it should be decently helpful.

And there's also some big claimed improvements with Bixby now being LLM-powered.

We've seen some other companies struggle with that lately, but you know,

with some Gemini integrations and some new Perplexity integrations could be... decent.

I mean, I'm not going to say anything until I try it,

but you know, new Bixby... could be good.

But then they also did something called Photo Assist, which,

which is essentially what Google did with Google Photos.

It's like...

AI photo editing... but built into the gallery, which it's cool tech.

I don't know if it's selling any phones.

It'll probably be a software update for older phones, but they did that.

They also did...

Creative Studio, which is kind of the same thing as, like, Apple's Image Playground.

Borderline useless in my opinion. but like I said,

it feels like they're just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall in

the world of AI just to see what will stick,

see what people will like.

They're actually calling it an AI phone in some of the press stuff

that I've seen for it,

which I don't love.

I feel like in an age where it's... more important than ever to get

real photos and videos from people's cell phones,

the slippery slope of, like, all this AI stuff in our photos... it's weird.

I'm not sure I love how far down the slope we're going,

but... here we are.

Anyway, no real massive surprises.

These all very much look and and feel like Samsung phones,

where most of the differences are just, like,

the small quality-of-life things under the skin and subtle evolution over time.

This is not one of their big Hail Marys.

My take is the Ultra feels like a little bit of a refresh

and it's a cool place to try this privacy screen thing.

I'm very excited to... see it... in person

and try it out... looks pretty sick!

The base phones going up by a hundred bucks.

Not so excited about

that... seems like they didn't try a whole lot of other stuff with—with those

phones.

But let me know what else you want to see in the full reviews

in the comments section below.

And of course, get subscribed to see the reviews

as soon as they come out,

because that's what the button is for.

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Plus, if you want to pick up a screen protector while you're at it,

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They're super easy to install, they include two in the pack, and yes,

it does work with the new privacy display.

So dbrand's new S26 lineup is available on their site

and nationwide at Best Buy in the US.

I'll leave a link down below if you want to check them out,

but thanks for watching.

Let me know what you think.

Catch you guys in the next one. peace!