Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Review: There's a Catch

You know, we can still hear what

>> Never mind.

You might remember all my impressions of

the phone were based on footage of it

before actually getting to hold it in

person. And those impressions were

pretty positive. Uh, but not a lot is

actually new with this phone. just a few

things that are new are pretty

interesting. But I have been using this

phone for about a week now and the more

I've used it and the more commentary

I've seen about it online. The more I

feel the need to remind people about

trade-offs, every feature in every phone

is a trade-off. And this new display is

maybe one of the most interesting case

studies in that in a long time. So on

paper, you know, it's a lot of the same

numbers as last year, right? It's a 6.9

in big OLED display, 1440p resolution, 1

to 120 hertz, etc. But they've added

this one massive new feature, the

privacy display. Incredibly useful

feature. You toggle it on or off

whenever you want. And when it's on, it

instantly limits the viewing angles

pretty dramatically, preventing anyone

from looking over your shoulder or

snooping. Now, yes, you could always

just buy a cheap 20, $30 screen

protector like this one that does that

through polarization. But unlike that

screen protector, this actually blocks

all viewing angles, horizontal or

vertical off-axis. But also, because

it's built into the display, you can

turn it on for just the pixels you want

to when you want to. So maybe only in

certain apps. So, you can have it only

block out your banking app and your

texting app or even only black out

incoming notifications, which is

incredible. This is a genuinely useful

innovation. It's really it's special

that it's actually a new hardware

feature, which we really don't get that

often in the smartphone world these

days. But, like I said, everything is a

trade-off. The way they pulled this off

is they essentially have two types of

pixels on this new display. wide angle

pixels that you can view from everywhere

and narrow angle pixels that seem to

have some type of focusing lens on them

so you can only see them from straight

on. So when you're just using the phone

like normal, all the pixels are on. But

when you decide to turn on the privacy

display, it simply turns off the

wide-angle pixels and it leaves only the

narrow angle pixels. So you achieve that

privacy filter effect, but now that also

means you just turned off half the

pixels. So, your resolution is actually

quite literally cut in half and you can

actually see it. Like there's blockier

edges around text and smaller details

and fine contrast here. I literally

bought a microscope for this. So, this

is privacy display off like normal. And

this is privacy display on. You can see

those pixels literally turning off. So,

yes, less resolution. And also, yes,

peak brightness is a bit lower. You

normally don't notice that because they

cleverly adjust the output of the pixels

that are staying on to keep the

perceived brightness about the same. But

if you're at a high enough brightness,

you will actually see it get a little

dimmer when you turn the feature on. And

even in regular use, that means this

display is slightly worse all the time.

I mean, think about it. If you if you've

added a narrow focusing lens to half of

your pixels, that means that your

viewing angles are going to be slightly

worse all the time because half of these

pixels now have permanently poor viewing

angles. It also appears to have a

different coating on the display that's

not quite as good at the anti-reflective

thing that was so good on S25 Ultra. And

it also turns out it's still an 8-bit

display simulating 10- bit color instead

of a full native 10- bit display like so

many others have added. But I think that

Samsung knows that most people are not

pixel peepers. Like even on this

display, this is a 1440p screen, but out

the box, it's set to 1080p by default

for everyone because they assume that

most people would rather have the

slightly longer battery life as a

trade-off over like a perfect screen. So

nerds like me will lock in and

immediately switch to 1440p and the

settings right out the box. And we will

notice more the slight resolution

differences and viewing angle

differences. and we'll upvote every

comment on Reddit that chastises Samsung

for using the 8bit display again. But at

the end of the day, this is the

trade-off that they decided to make to

have this one really cool feature that

they probably believe will sell more

phones. But to be totally clear, this is

still a really good display. But like I

said, if you're a pixel peeper like me,

just know what you're getting into

because there are better-l looking

displays that you can get for 1,300

bucks. Ironically, probably also

manufactured by Samsung. But if that's

your number one priority, there's other

places you can look. Also, subscribe for

more phones under microscopes. Here's

another trade-off. This new design, and

it's not even really that new of a

design. They just made the phone a

little thinner, a little lighter, and a

little rounder at the corners to make it

look like the rest of the flagship

phones that they make. But even that

comes with downsides. Like, since the

corners are more round, that means the

part where the S Pen goes into the phone

is capped with a slight curve instead of

totally flat. So now the SPEN can only

go back into this phone this one way,

unlike last year where it was flat and

so you didn't really have to think about

that at all. Also, since the camera bump

is now a camera plateau with rings on

top of it, it's bigger, which combined

with a slightly thinner body means this

phone rocks viciously on a table when

I'm trying to type with no case. I'm

sure most people just throw a Dbrand

case on it and call it a day. But yeah,

it's not nothing. And switching back to

aluminum sides from titanium honestly

makes no real difference to using the

phone, but it does mean people will be

able to make fun of you for copying the

iPhone's titanium for no reason. The new

chip is a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for

Galaxy. So, I benchmarked it against the

OnePlus 15, which is a Snapdragon 8

Elite Gen 5. Similar scores, slightly

higher actually for the Samsung version,

but still right around the yearly 20 to

30% CPU improvements expected. Really,

Samsung seems to be much more focused on

NPU, which is around the AI generating

features on the phone, which we'll get

to in a second. We'll get there. But

yeah, the performance is generally it's

great. It's almost a formality at this

point. Hey, are animations smooth? Yep.

Can it handle heavy multitasking and

gaming? Yep. The redesigned vapor

chamber with less volume inside the

phone is doing just fine. And battery

life is actually slightly better despite

having the same 5,000 mAh battery again

because the chip and software are a bit

more efficient. Standby time still not

quite as magical as some of its

competitors, but it's really good

battery life and this phone charges

slightly faster at a peak 60 watts. Now,

I do have to say though, and if you're a

subscriber, you probably know exactly

where I'm about to go with this. No CH2

magnets. That seems like it would have

been a no-brainer. And I know you want

to sell lots of cases with magnets in

them, Samsung, but wouldn't you also

want to maybe win an MVP phone of the

year award, too? And then no silicon

carbon battery, which, you know, I know

you've had battery scares in the past,

but wouldn't you want to be eligible for

a most improved award, too? I think a

phone that isn't slightly thinner, but

that does have more battery and magnets

built in would have been pretty

universally appreciated. I'm just

saying. Uh, Mr. who's a boss, Aaron. He

just did his battery test that

highlights the slightly better battery

life of S26 Ultra over the last gen, but

it also kind of shows it getting dunked

on by some silicon carbon battery phones

from last year. At this point, it's not

surprising that they're still playing it

safe here, but it's also still kind of

frustrating cuz it feels like the

ceiling for this phone could have been

so much higher, so much more ultra.

These cameras are mostly the same as

last year, but I think that actually

undersells how good they are. There's a

bigger aperture on the main camera. The

3x is about the same and then a bigger

aperture on the 5x as well. So, both

these cameras let more light in and get

all the benefits that come with that,

including slightly softer bokeh with

close-up subjects. And as a

photographer, I feel like I'm always

going to take the faster lens when I can

get it. The minimum focus distance

though on the main camera definitely got

worse. So, I don't know if that's a

direct trade-off. There is still macro

mode, but I did notice that downgrade

from the main camera. Not a disaster,

but just something to notice. The more

noticeable camera changes though are

actually the ones enabled by software.

So the APV log codec was added. It works

great. They also added this super

aggressive stabilization feature called

horizon lock. And it's not the first

time we've seen it, but it is one of the

best executions we've seen of it. It

takes advantage of this huge 200

megapixel sensor and crops in to shoot

ridiculously stable, still quad HD video

up to 60 frames per second. It's pretty

sick. In general, video footage with the

slightly wider aperture on the main

camera look good. All of the talking

head footage on the latest autofocus

episode with the Polestar 4 was shot on

this S26 Ultra. So, if you want to look

at way more footage from this phone,

I'll link that below the like button.

The rest of what's new on S26 Ultra

could be described as software. It's a

word you could use. Uh, slop is another

word I could use. The word Samsung would

probably like me to use is agentic,

but

nah. There's a ton of AI features

crammed into this phone now, ranging

from call screening, which is very

welcome and very useful for screening

unknown numbers, to audio eraser, which

does a good job of pretty naturally

removing a good amount of background

noise in videos, all the way to photo

assist, which lets you edit photos to

create entirely new scenes that never

actually happened. It's a lot and you

can scroll through the Galaxy AI tab on

this phone and see a lot of the new

stuff in here. I think honestly take it

or leave it. Like you can choose to use

as much of it as you want. You can go

full slot mode and use all of it all the

time or you can kind of just never use

any of it. I will say I didn't get Now

Nudge to work once and I also tried many

things with the AI textbased photo

editor and to its credit it refused many

of the things I tried to make it do. So,

you know, yay for safeguards, I guess.

I'm just not convinced any of this is a

reason to buy this phone, especially

when a lot of it could and probably

should make its way to other Samsung

devices across the lineup, older stuff

through a software update. So, then

lastly, while I have your attention, I

would just like to take this opportunity

to say that the base S26 and S26 Plus

are not good deals anymore. Like, those

phones feel like afterthoughts. The

designs are basically unchanged, fine,

but they've also had basically the same

cameras since S23. They got rid of

millimeter wave. It's also an Exynos

chip in a lot of regions outside of the

US. And they got rid of the 128 gig

version, which I think is good, but they

just kept the 256 gig at the same price.

So, that just means the price of entry

is higher. It's now $900 baseline. You

can get a lot more phone for $900,

but Samsung doesn't really seem to care.

Just wanted to put that out there while

I had you. Uh, you'd probably have to

vote with your wallets to get Samsung to

actually do anything. You know, this S26

Ultra is $1,300 starting, so it's also

very pricey, but I can at least say it's

a really good phone with some clever new

features. I just think the price is

probably the most ultra thing about this

phone. you know, like it's a big phone,

sure, and it's got ultraish cameras and

chip, but aside from that, this feels

like a S26

Plus Plus Pro Max. Does that make sense?

But it doesn't have a super advanced new

silicon carbon battery or super fast

charging or wireless charging, and it

also doesn't have magnets, and they

still don't have Bluetooth in the S Pen.

But they do have one super cool, very

advanced, oneofone feature that is in no

other smartphone, and that's the

trade-off that they bet on.

Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in

the next one. Peace.