Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review — of course it’s the best Android ever
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review — of course it’s the best Android ever
https://www.techradar.com/phones/samsung-galaxy-phones/samsung-galaxy-s26-ultra-review
Publish Date: 2026-03-02 11:55:00
Source Domain: www.techradar.com
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Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Two-minute review
Nowadays, smartphone changes can usually be measured in millimeters and gram fractions. The era of sweeping hardware redesigns is all but done. Most of the updates we see seem to be in material swaps and growing and shrinking camera array plateaus. That’s not a bad thing, certainly not judging by the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra I hold in my hand.
It’s eminently familiar but also stunningly powerful and aesthetically sublime – even without last year’s titanium. It’s not a perfect Android phone (some day, Samsung will adopt MagSafe or something like it), but easily one of the best I’ve ever used or tested. It’s the full package. A relatively slim and light big-screen mobile communicator, and a powerful pocket computer that, with its hidden S Pen, can even excite creative types or compulsive note takers.
Samsung gets away with not changing much by still delivering on all the promises of a great flagship phone.
It has excellent cameras, easily the best of not just the S26 lineup, but all recent Galaxy phones (even the foldables). It has the fastest chip, even, thanks to a bit of customization from Qualcomm, outdoing the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 you might find on other Android phones.
The new S26 Ultra is on the left, the last, slightly squarer S25 Ultra model on the right. (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
The S26 Ultra hides a pair of truly remarkable features that are not evident at first glance but will surely be the most talked-about updates for some time to come. One is the Privacy Display, a true bit of display hardware innovation that has no equivalent on any other modern smartphone. Then there’s the built-in gimbal. Strike that – it’s not really a gimbal, just a wild bit of hardware and software engineering that lets you turn your camera up to…
