Key Specs
| CPU | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (3nm) Adreno 840 |
| Memory | 12GB/256GB 12GB/512GB 16GB/1TB |
| Display | 6.9’’ QHD+ Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X, Variable 120Hz 8-Bit Color Depth + FRC, Privacy Display |
| Camera | 200 MP, f/1.4, 23mm (wide),multi-directional PDAF, OIS 10 MP, f/2.4, 67mm (telephoto), PDAF, OIS, 3x optical zoom 50 MP, f/2.9, 111mm (periscope telephoto), PDAF, OIS, 5x optical zoom 50 MP, f/1.9, 120˚ (ultrawide), dual pixel PDAF, Super Steady video |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth 6.0, USB Type-C 3.2, Up to WiFi 7 |
| OS | Android 16, OneUI 8.5 7 major Android Upgrades |
| Battery | 5000 mAh, 60W Fast Charging 25W Fast Wireless Charging |
| Available Colors | Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, Black, White, Silver Shadow, Pink Gold |
| Retail Price | 12GB/256GB : RM 5999 12GB/512GB : RM 6799 16GB/1TB : RM 7999 |
Video Review
What Is The Galaxy S26 Ultra
One of the more important phones of the year is always a Galaxy Ultra, and 2026 is Galaxy S26 Series,the S26 Ultra. Malaysia has 3 variants, maxing out with 1TB with 16GB RAM. at RM 7999, just RM 200 more from the Galaxy S25 Ultra last year. As always I go for the mid point, the 512GB variant and the sticker price is RM 6799. After locking in every possible voucher and using the bonuses during the pre-order phase, the final price was actually RM 4939, which is insane value, and makes it extremely competitive.
This Review is broken down into 2 Sections : What’s Good and What Needs To Be Improved.
What’s Good
Redesigned Ergonomics
Samsung has moved away from the sharp, boxy corners of previous Ultras. The S26 Ultra features more rounded edges and is 0.3mm thinner, making it much more comfortable to hold without a case. Interestingly, it has switched from Titanium back to a refined Armor Aluminum, which has helped drop the weight to 214g.
Performance and Battery Life
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 For Galaxy has 39% faster NPU, fully ready and speedy with whichever AI Agent of your choosing, whether it’s perplexity, Gemini or Bixby. This powers “Now Nudge,” which proactively suggests actions. For example, if you’re chatting about a dinner plan, it can automatically pull up your calendar or suggest a restaurant booking without you having to ask.
Gaming locked in expected performance while battery life takes the lead. If you’re playing Zenless Zone Zero ran out of the box well, locking in 60 FPS with maxed out graphics, with no micro stutters in the first 20 minutes, while throttles take about 25-30 mins to kick in, in which is drops to just the high 50s. The impressive point is it only stays up to 40 degs warm throughout my 3-session game testing. Genshin also stays pegged at 60 FPS on Max settings, Native resolution via Game Booster Plus, and only throttles after half an hour, which at least guarantees your dailies will be a smooth, beautiful experience. PUBG Mobile was easy.
120FPS on Smooth Graphics, but the cool part is that the S26 Ultra showcased really low touch latency, which made it really feel like a gaming phone. The 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy here really earns its rep here, showcasing just how well its efficiency cores are doing the work. Battery life is impressive, even if it’s still just 5000 mah. It’s Samsung’s time to yet again prove that software optimization = battery life, rather than just shove bigger capacity batteries into the phone. On normal mode youre guaranteed at least 7 hours of screen on time, while low-power mode pushes it to 9-10 hours, especially on a busy day.
Charging is also improved to 60W from 45W, wirelessly 25W from 15W. It’s a small step in the competitive space, but a huge one for Samsung, something everyone will appreciate.
It’s actually fast, getting 81% of charge on the first 30 minutes, and fully topping it up takes about 50 minutes, but you’ll need a 5A rated cable and a PPS charger with a 60W profile, which means you’ll likely need new chargers from Samsung. Most competitors are in the 40 minute range now so a 10 minute difference seems negligible when it counts, over 80% in the first half hour is already making me more than satisfied.
Galaxy S26 Ultra 5G gets 7 Years of Major Android Updates and Security Patches, still the longest in the market.
Finally, it’s the fact it that the S26 Ultra has an incredible fast USB Port. It’s USB4, making it technically up to 4x faster (20 Gbps vs 5Gbps on 24/25) in transferring data using a compatible cable and port to your other system. This also carries forward to its display port 1.4, which now supports DeX in native 4k60 rather than going through Good Lock to achieve the same. Creators, do that note and test whether the SSD’s you have on-hand can utilize Galaxy S26 Ultra’s faster bandwidth as I noticed that anything up to 3 years ago kind of acts up, and i suspect its the Gen 2×2’s controller being extra sensitive about it.
Photo and Video
I don’t have big changes to share with you on the list of hardware improvements, the megapixel count hasn’t changed, but the main lens is now significantly “faster” with an f/1.4 aperture. roughly 47% more light hits the sensor compared to the S25 Ultra, resulting in much cleaner night shots and more natural detail retention, it’s still not perfect but it’s heading in the right direction, forgiven, since this is a refinement model, just the aperture and new processor are improving things, in which it makes sense if S24 Ultra owners are looking to jump rather than people who are on the S25 Ultra who should be more than satisfied now. Ultrawide remains a strong camera, with excellent detail, dynamic range and slightly punch colors. For Samsungs, I always appreciate the ultrawide for having the least amount of distortion correction and it shows. Selfies are also improved, with a newer wider lens that offers natural detail and sharpness, punch colors and snappy Autofocus that also delivered in lowlight. Photo samples are in the video, please take a look!
As usual, 4K video looks amazing, producing sharp video with excellent audio, perfect for content creators even if they don’t have a mic. The Audio Clean up feature does very well here, take a look. You’ll also get to shoot LOG like last time with built in LUTS you can even add your own cube files as well, to see how the final look with be like while it shoots in LOG mode. However, the final boss here is APV, which I feel is ground breaking. Unlike standard HEVC (H.265) which uses inter-frame compression (predicting movement between frames to save space), APV is an intra-frame codec , which means Every single frame is encoded as a high-quality individual image. This makes “scrubbing” through a timeline in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro buttery smooth because the CPU doesn’t have to “calculate” the frames in between. It uses a significantly higher bitrate to preserve detail. For example, 4K/60fps in APV HQ hits ~1,592 Mbps, whereas standard HEVC HDR is only around 52 Mbps. Last but not least is Horizontal Lock Mode, which I think is video stabilization in its most exxagerated form. Even if you rotate your phone, your video footage still stays incredibly stable, which really does mimic how a gimble or action camera behaves. I found it as a fun feature to play around with, though I personally have no found practical use for it. We’re you thinking of strapping your RM 6000 phone on your bike helmet or somewhere else? i didnt think so. It’s a nice bonus to have.
OneUI and AI
7 years OS and security updates are still a plus, and S26U comes with OneUI 8.5 out of the box, and it showed up to be not only power efficient, but AI efficient as well. Circle to search is a hot favorite of mine, I’m able to get results of multiple objects in a single image, which is a point of convenience. Now Nudge is also useful, expanding the usefullness of the Now Brief with pro-active suggestions based on what you’re currently doing. You’re chatting with a friend or client via Whatsapp, and when the phone sees dates and times, it will Nudge you with an offer to add that meeting to your calendar. It’s semi manual, and that makes sense because you still have a choice of whether you wanted to have that meeting in the first place.
Now Brief introduced a virtual assistant that’s close to what you’ll get from a human being, someone who’ll brief you on your day-to-day as well as some snippets of useful info like local weather and travel times to your appointments. Now Nudge is like work experience to that personal assistant, giving it training to be a proactive individual who’ll suggest and assist you in your meeting and conversations. You do save time with your scheduling and tasks, but you’ll still need to give input, whether manually typing them or verbally dictating AI to do it for you. It’s really getting closer, but it’s no selling point, not because the S25 Ultra will possibly catch this up in an upgrade, but also the fact that it requires a level of commitment from the user to give all this input, otherwise your assistant will not have much to say. Hencewhy the S26 Ultra is a better upgrade for users from 2-4 generations ago rather than last year.
Privacy Display
This is the headline feature, and it does earn points in innovation, because it’s a hardware implementation to the pixels itself. Privacy display significantly reduces visibility of the Wide Pixel , while the narrow pixels still beam your content straight to your viewing angle aka straight to your face. Such innovation takes a hit in panel specs, with the workarounds being software level once again. It’s still a dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X, 120Hz, but with a 2600 nit peak brightness. It’s also no longer 10-bit in color depth, but nowa 8-bit one with FRC. Privacy mode also makes things look a tad bit softer, with text and images not as sharp as before, and Samsung did provide at least 2 ways to counteract that to some degree.
First, you can just set Privacy display to only block incoming notifications from specific apps, such as banking or private messages, which is always at the top of the display, which is good enough for most people, until they need to fully use the whole screen if they’re viewing something extremely private. 2nd would be both mDNIe and Proscaler. Both fundamentally tackle different issues that come with such a display. mDNIe works on improving color gradients and transistions, to product a depth closer to the 10 bit display that we’re missing out. ProScaler works on sharpness and contrast more, making sure mix media content of images, videos and texts have that crispness in them. Both can be found in settings, and are definitely things you need to be aware off. While I could say why didn’t Samsung just put a 10-12 bit panel instead? My best guess is always either cost or technological limitations for now. Perhaps the S26 Ultra is also a test bed to see how people receive the Privacy Display and based on our feedback, they can see what future direction they’re going to take, which brings me to the next segment, what DIDN’T work.
What DIDN’T Work?
3x Telephoto
Most images actually do look okay, but the problem is it’s the S series. As a flagship, I deserve to have higher expectations and 3x is definitely a range I work on alot. I know we have a better 5X and main camera, but I honestly expected that the 3x telephoto to at least get a pixel bump to 12MP or straight up 50MP. 10MP optics really sounds dated, and I know the direction of the S26 series is to be more AI heavy, but I do still want some hardware optics to take precedence over AI post processing of photos. Images aren’t bad, seriously, the tech is just dated for a 2026 flagship.
Where Are My Magnets?
There’s still no magnets on the S26 Ultra. the Qi2 standard is going to be even more widespread this year and samsung favored making a thinner and lighter flagship than to simple get those magnets in. Again, it’s probably due to cost, and I did pay almost RM 5000 for it, but if I paid sticker price instead, it honestly would’ve been nice.
Spen Is Still BlueTooth Only
Spen is still bluetooth only. It’s honestly a gripe I hope Samsung would pay attention to. I’m not the only reviewer talking about this, im sure it’s everyone. As a stylus for notes, drawing and circle to search, hell yeah it’s a good, but I do miss putting my phone a distance away and using my stylus to take photos and videos. Instead, I have to get a Galaxy watch to do those things, which adds to cost to the consumer that’s not really needed. It may be a subtle way to get people into the ecosystem, but Galaxy Watches are great and reliable in their own right, people will still get the watch if the stylus was still how it used to be!
Design
CALM DOWN, it’s not completely bad that it’s in this section. There is some good seriously, but it did come at a cost. The S26 Ultra is better in terms of thinness and weight, being justs ~214g. They took away the titanium from last year and replaced it with a new Armor Aluminum, which really just takes away Premium Points but gets you that lighter slimmer build, and that adds comfort as well as superior heat dissipation. The trade off is being less durable, either way, realistically, both materials will scratch and dent when dropped, so just put on a case, not just for this , but also for that massive camera module at the back, it juts out SO much, and it wobbles on a flat surface even more now. Such is the price of becoming slimmer while not cutting back on hardware specs. You will put on a case anyway, so it’s really not that bigga deal, im just being a gaslighter.
The Verdict
The Upgrades are pretty modest this year, but it looks more towards Quality of Life, with the only innovations being the Privacy Display and much improved Agentic AI execution. The upgrades in hardware are standard and familiar, with its focus now on appealing to content creators and even professional videographers, though they have to get used to an 8-bit display when filming.
Mobile photographers for the most part will appreciate the better main and 5x telephoto sensors, though they might have to accept that the Galaxy S26 Ultra is an AI first camera phone, so if you’re looking for a specific color science, this won’t be the one.
OneUI is still magical as always, and together with the Spen, it’s still very much the only smartphone you can get with a native accessory like that, so productivity focused individuals will still call this phone home. It will deliver a stellar, solid phone experience as always, and I truly hope the Galaxy S27 Ultra will have more up its sleeve to catch up with the harder-working competition vying to grab some of that sweet sweet marketshare.
