24 Hours with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, Here’s the Good and Bad

It’s now been a little over 24 hours since I picked up my review unit of the Galaxy S26 Ultra after Unpacked, and I’ve put it through a lot. Literally. So let’s talk about that first 24 hours with Samsung’s latest and greatest.

Of course, many of you are going to say it’s the same phone from last year. And if you are simply looking at the design and the spec sheet, that might be true. But Samsung has made a lot of incremental changes that add up to be a much larger upgrade than you might expect.

Let’s start off with the camera. Now this is not going to be a full review, that will come later on – likely after Mobile World Congress is over. This is just impressions from spending a full day with it, versus spending about an hour with the whole Galaxy S26 lineup ahead of Unpacked, for our Galaxy S26 hands-on.

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$1,299

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Samsung Galaxy S26

$899

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Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus

$1,099

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The camera has exceeded my expectations, so far

Looking at the spec sheet, yes the cameras are the same as the Galaxy S25 Ultra. That’s a 200-megapixel primary sensor, 50-megapixel ultrawide, 10-megapixel 3x telephoto, and a 50-megapixel 5x telephoto. But that’s only half the battle when it comes to camera hardware.

This year, Samsung also opened up the aperture on both the primary and 5x telephoto sensor, making them 47% and 37% brighter, respectively. And, you can tell the difference. Below, are some side-by-side samples I took with the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the vivo X300 Pro, which is heralded as the best smartphone camera on the market today (until the X300 Ultra arrives).

In some of these samples, I actually prefer the vivo X300 Pro, but that’s not to say it’s better than the X300 Pro as a whole. One of the big downgrades this year has been the fact that the periscope telephoto has changed. And that means the minimum focusing distance has gone up to 80cm. Meaning no telemacro. A feature that many of Samsung’s competitors have added, including the Google Pixel 10 Pro.

I haven’t had a chance to use it at night a whole lot yet, and really test out that new nightography that Samsung has been hyping up. The few pictures I took so far at night, I wasn’t too impressed with.

On the video front, horizon lock for Super Steady is pretty insane. There’s really no excuse for shaky video anymore with that feature now available. You can literally turn your phone upside down and it’ll still be locked on the horizon. It’s like witchcraft. And something I’ll be using a ton at MWC next week.

The Privacy Display is the feature you didn’t know you needed

Now, the other big feature here on the Galaxy S26 Ultra is the Privacy Display. This is not the same as those privacy screen protectors that you can get on Temu for a few pennies. This is much deeper than that, and best of all, it can be disabled whenever you don’t want to use it.

It does a good job at making sure people around you can’t see your display, when turned on. And at maximum strength, it is really incredible at how dark it can get at just a few degrees off-center. As we’ve mentioned in our Galaxy S26 coverage, the Privacy Display can also work on portions of the display. Like the notifications, or certain apps, or your lockscreen password and PIN. Which makes it so much better than the privacy screen protector you got on Alibaba – which I’ve never been a huge fan of those anyways.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Privacy Display AH

But, before you call me a Samsung shill, I will admit that it does come with some drawbacks. First off, the anti-glare display is still there, but it’s not as strong as the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Unfortunately, I do not have one with me to test side-by-side, but it’s definitely more reflective than last year and the year before.

Secondly, the Privacy Display does darken the display a bit. Which is to be expected, since it does effectively turn off about half of the pixels. The display also looks a little bit grainy when the Privacy Display is on.

The brightside? This can be turned on or off whenever you need it. And even triggered with Samsung Routines and other conditions. But, unfortunately, that lack of anti-glare is an issue that will persist whether the Privacy Display is on or off.

Battery life isn’t looking good

It’s early, so I don’t want to talk too much about this, but battery life doesn’t look to good here. Now, I have been using a number of OPPO devices lately, with crazy big batteries, like the 7,500mAh OPPO Find X9 Pro. So I’m more used to much bigger batteries that last much longer. But keep in mind that I am barely 24 hours into actually using this phone. So things are still settling in. I’ve also been using it a ton outside and using the camera a ton.

Unfortunately, I probably won’t get a real gauge on how good or bad the battery is in normal usage until after MWC, since I’m going straight from San Francisco over to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress.

But, charging is quite good. I charged it from around 10% to full this morning, using an Anker charger that can max out at about 100W, and it fully charged in about 45 minutes. Not bad at all, considering the Galaxy S25 Ultra did this same charge cycle in around an hour and 10 minutes.

That’s it for now. We’ll have a full review soon, as well as reviews on the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26 Plus as Samsung did give us all three models.

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