Perhaps because I grew up far removed from the logomania and trend-chasing of the big city, I’ve never been someone who rushes to buy the latest phone. My first smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy Pocket 2, stayed firmly glued to my naïve 13-year-old hand until it was inevitably stolen from my school bag. Since then, I’ve tended to replace my phones only when I really need to.
So, when Samsung invited me to spend three weeks with its new Galaxy S26 Ultra, I found myself in an unusually good position to judge whether the upgrade was worthwhile. Less than a year ago, my partner gifted me the Galaxy S25 Ultra for my birthday, meaning I could compare the two devices not just on paper but through everyday use.
The S26 Ultra arrived in Samsung’s Cobalt Violet finish, one of six available colourways (two are online exclusives). Like previous Galaxy devices, the box is fairly minimal, containing only the phone and a USB-C cable, so you’ll need to budget separately for a charger, case and screen protector. As someone with a long history of dropping my phone at the most inconvenient moments, I simply repurposed my old phone case. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it did the job.
On paper, the changes are modest. The display is fractionally larger, the body slightly slimmer and the phone a touch lighter, but in the hand, it feels immediately familiar. Samsung hasn’t tried to reinvent the Ultra this year and, for anyone who already liked the S25, that’s probably not a bad thing.
The display is still one of the phone’s strongest features. Whether I was editing photos between meetings, reading long-form articles during my lunch break or catching up on YouTube before bed, everything looked crisp and bright without appearing overly saturated. Even outdoors, I rarely found myself searching for shade just to read a message.
One of the more interesting additions is Samsung’s new Privacy Display feature. While privacy screen protectors have existed for years, Samsung has built the functionality directly into the display, allowing you to switch it on or off whenever needed. It can conceal the screen from curious eyes, hide incoming notifications or activate automatically when entering passwords and PINs. For anyone regularly working from cafés, airports or press events, it’s a useful feature. It isn’t reason enough to upgrade on its own, but it’s one of those small additions that definitely earns its place.
As a journalist and digital editor, however, the camera is ultimately what makes or breaks a phone. Much of my work involves photographing products, interiors and events before quickly editing and publishing content on the move, so it’s probably the feature I pay the most attention to.
The hardware itself remains familiar: a 200MP main camera, 50MP ultra-wide lens, dual telephoto system and 12MP front-facing camera, with most of the changes happening behind the scenes through brighter apertures and improved image processing.
For the first week, I wasn’t convinced there was much separating it from the S25 Ultra. Then, almost accidentally, I photographed my eye. Zooming in revealed individual eyelashes, tiny skin textures and colours that looked remarkably true to life without tipping into the over-processed look smartphone cameras can sometimes produce.
The real test came during the launch of Charles Greig’s redesigned Hyde Park Corner boutique. Jewellery launches are notoriously difficult to photograph. Reflective surfaces, candlelight, bright display cases and constantly moving guests create one of the least forgiving environments for smartphone photography.
This is where I started noticing the improvements. Candlelight retained texture instead of becoming a bright blur, reflections remained better controlled than I expected, movement through the crowd stayed relatively crisp and colours felt natural rather than exaggerated. I still found myself manually lowering the exposure from time to time, as the camera occasionally tried a little too hard to brighten darker scenes, but the images needed very little editing before I was happy to publish them.
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Video also feels more polished this time around. Samsung’s Nightography Video produced cleaner-looking footage in low light, while the new Horizontal Lock feature quickly became one of my favourite additions.
A few weeks before my birthday I’d bought a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 because I had never been particularly impressed by the stabilisation on previous Samsung phones. I’m certainly not getting rid of the DJI any time soon, but I found myself reaching for it less often. Walking through crowded events, changing my grip and filming on the move all felt noticeably smoother than I expected. Image noise still becomes more obvious once you push beyond about 3x zoom in darker conditions, but for Instagram Reels and quick event coverage, it performs well.
Like every flagship smartphone in 2026, Samsung leans heavily into AI. Some of the new features, such as Creative Studio, never really became part of my workflow. Others quietly did.
Call Screening ended up being quite useful, answering unknown callers before generating a short summary of who was calling and why. It’s an elegant way of filtering spam without relying on third-party apps. Meanwhile, Now Brief quickly became part of my morning routine, surfacing calendar appointments, weather updates, screen-time reports and personalised suggestions throughout the day.
The addition of parking reminders, which record where and when you parked using Google Maps, is another thoughtful touch, even if my bright orange Suzuki S-Presso usually makes finding my car fairly foolproof.
Under the hood, Samsung’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy processor brings improvements to AI processing, graphics and overall performance. In everyday use, though, the experience was less about noticing dramatic speed increases and more about never really thinking about the phone at all. Switching between Canva, Chrome, Outlook, WhatsApp and the camera happened effortlessly, and even after long days of photographing events, editing articles and navigating across Johannesburg, I never experienced noticeable lag or overheating. If you’re coming directly from the S25 Ultra, however, the difference remains fairly subtle.
Battery life was another pleasant surprise. The 5,000mAh battery comfortably lasted through busy workdays filled with photography, navigation, messaging, Spotify and social media, and I usually ended the evening with charge to spare. When I did need to recharge, going from around 10% to full took less than an hour.
Samsung has also introduced improved battery protection that pauses charging once the battery is full before allowing it to discharge slightly before topping itself up again. It’s a small addition, but one that should help people like me who almost always leave their phone charging overnight.
Three weeks with the Galaxy S26 Ultra didn’t convince me to become someone who upgrades their phone every year. If you already own the S25 Ultra, I’d struggle to recommend upgrading unless features like Privacy Display or the improved video capabilities solve a specific problem for you.
But if you’re coming from an older Galaxy device, the S26 Ultra is an easy phone to like. What stood out wasn’t the AI buzzwords or benchmark statistics, but the cumulative effect of lots of thoughtful refinements. The camera is dependable, the battery lasts, the software stays out of your way, and features like Horizontal Lock and Privacy Display proved more useful than I expected.
It’s not a dramatic reinvention of last year’s phone, but after three weeks of living with it, it felt like a thoughtful refinement rather than change for the sake of change.
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