Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review: We tested its camera, AI, Privacy Display and call screening for a month.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra arrives in an increasingly competitive smartphone landscape, where the "Ultra" moniker has traditionally signified the pinnacle of Android innovation. For years, Samsung’s top-tier S-series models have set benchmarks in display technology, camera prowess, and overall performance. However, the paradigm has shifted considerably, with rival manufacturers pushing boundaries with breakthroughs such as high-capacity silicon-carbon batteries that offer extended endurance, and increasingly sophisticated computational photography algorithms that redefine mobile imaging. Against this backdrop of relentless innovation from competitors, the question looms large: can the new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra truly retain its crown as the undisputed king of Android flagships? Or does this iteration signal a crucial juncture for the South Korean tech giant, prompting a re-evaluation of what "Ultra" genuinely embodies in the modern smartphone era? CNA Lifestyle embarked on a comprehensive, month-long review, integrating the S26 Ultra into real-world scenarios to scrutinize its performance in everyday use.

Subtle Refinements to Design and Build

On paper, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra presents a series of incremental yet thoughtful upgrades over its 2025 predecessor, the S25 Ultra. While the changes might appear minuscule at first glance, they reflect a meticulous approach to industrial design focused on enhanced ergonomics and user experience. The S26 Ultra is fractionally taller (163.6 mm vs 162.8 mm) and wider (78.1 mm vs 77.6 mm), suggesting a slightly expanded canvas for its immersive display. More notably, it boasts a thinner profile (7.9 mm vs 8.2 mm) and a lighter build (214g vs 218g). These subtle reductions in thickness and weight contribute to a more comfortable in-hand feel, a crucial factor for a device of its considerable size, making prolonged usage less fatiguing. The pursuit of a thinner, lighter design without compromising structural integrity or battery life is a testament to ongoing advancements in material science and internal component miniaturization, even if the visual impact is not immediately dramatic.

An Evolved Camera System with Hidden Depths

The S26 Ultra’s camera system, while largely retaining the core architecture of its predecessor, features critical refinements designed to elevate image quality, particularly in challenging conditions. The robust setup includes a 50MP ultrawide camera, a formidable 200MP wide-angle main sensor, a 50MP telephoto lens offering an impressive five times optical zoom, a secondary 10MP telephoto camera with three times optical zoom, and a capable 12MP front-facing camera.

The most significant upgrades lie in the slightly wider apertures of the main 200MP camera (now f/1.4) and the 50MP telephoto camera (f/2.9). A wider aperture allows more light to reach the sensor, theoretically translating into brighter images, improved low-light performance, and a more pronounced natural bokeh effect – the pleasing blur in the background of portrait shots. This enhancement is particularly vital for capturing nuanced details and vibrant colors in dimly lit environments, a common challenge for smartphone cameras.

However, the review revealed a perplexing dichotomy: the S26 Ultra’s "vanilla" or default photo and video modes, while delivering commendable results in ideal lighting conditions, often fell short in less-than-perfect scenarios. In well-lit outdoor settings or even moderately lit indoor spaces, images and videos were consistently sharp, detailed, and color-accurate. The phone’s computational photography algorithms performed admirably in optimizing exposures and dynamic range, often producing visually appealing results suitable for casual sharing. Yet, a major caveat emerged when operating in environments with poor or highly variable lighting, such as dimly lit concert halls or conference venues without natural light – common professional settings for an entertainment journalist. Here, the default modes struggled, frequently yielding overly saturated colors and an unpleasantly smoothed-out texture, sacrificing fine detail for noise reduction. This suggests an aggressive post-processing approach that, while aiming to reduce graininess, inadvertently compromises image fidelity.

The true brilliance of the S26 Ultra’s camera system, ironically, lies hidden. Deep within the "More" section of the camera app reside "Expert Raw" and "Pro Video" modes, with the former even requiring an additional download. These modes are an absolute game-changer, transforming the S26 Ultra from a decent point-and-shoot into a powerful photographic tool. Expert Raw, in particular, unlocks a wealth of manual controls typically found on professional cameras, allowing users to fine-tune white balance, ISO, shutter speed, and focus. This granular control empowers photographers to dictate the look and feel of their images, bypassing the often-overzealous automatic processing.

Furthermore, Expert Raw introduces a revolutionary "Virtual Aperture" setting. This innovative feature allows users to digitally simulate various aperture values, enabling the creation of stunning portrait shots with beautifully rendered background blur that closely rivals the aesthetic quality of images captured by dedicated DSLR cameras. The ability to precisely control depth of field post-capture, combined with the raw image data capture, provides an unparalleled level of creative flexibility on a smartphone. For serious photographers or those willing to invest time in learning its intricacies, the S26 Ultra’s camera system, when fully utilized through these advanced modes, is truly exceptional. It underscores Samsung’s engineering prowess, but also raises questions about the accessibility of its most powerful features to the average user, necessitating a degree of technical savvy or a willingness to engage with tutorials.

Performance Powerhouse and Remarkable Battery Efficiency

Powering the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is the formidable Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. This custom-tuned iteration of Qualcomm’s flagship mobile platform signifies Samsung’s continued collaboration with the chipmaker to optimize performance specifically for its devices. The "Elite" designation typically implies higher clock speeds and further architectural optimizations compared to the standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, ensuring Samsung’s flagship stands out. Samsung claims this new chipset delivers a significant performance uplift: up to a 19 percent increase in CPU performance, a substantial 39 percent improvement in Neural Processing Unit (NPU) performance, and a 24 percent boost in Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance compared to the S25 Ultra’s processor.

In real-world terms, these improvements translate into a remarkably fluid and responsive user experience. Everyday tasks, from app switching to web browsing, are instantaneous. More demanding activities, such as graphically intensive gaming, 4K video editing, and complex AI computations, are handled with effortless grace, demonstrating the raw power beneath the hood. The dramatic increase in NPU performance is particularly crucial, as it directly fuels the device’s advanced AI capabilities, ensuring that features like Photo Assist and Call Screening operate with speed and precision.

Despite retaining the same 5,000 mAh battery capacity as its predecessor, the S26 Ultra delivered one of the most surprising and impressive aspects of the review: its excellent battery life. A full charge consistently lasted over 13 hours of regular usage, surpassing the endurance of both the S25 Ultra and S24 Ultra by approximately an hour. This remarkable longevity, without an increase in battery size, can be attributed primarily to the superior power efficiency of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor and optimizations within Samsung’s One UI 8.5 software. Advanced display technologies, such as the Dynamic AMOLED 3.0 panel with its adaptive refresh rate and efficient power management, also play a crucial role in extending usage time. While many manufacturers are pushing past the 6,000 mAh mark, the S26 Ultra demonstrates that capacity alone isn’t the sole determinant of battery life; intelligent hardware-software integration is equally, if not more, impactful.

AI Features That Prove Genuinely Useful

While the broader industry, and indeed Samsung, has often faced skepticism regarding the practical utility of AI features in smartphones, the S26 Ultra makes a compelling case for their integration. The device showcases several AI advancements that are genuinely useful in daily life, moving beyond mere novelty.

For introverts or those wary of unsolicited calls, the AI-assisted Call Screening feature stands out as one of Samsung’s most thoughtful additions. This tool allows an AI assistant to answer unknown calls on the user’s behalf, transcribing the conversation in real-time. While simply ignoring unknown calls remains an option, Call Screening offers a proactive filter. In testing, legitimate callers engaged naturally with the AI assistant, stating their purpose, which was then relayed to the user. Paradoxically, many suspected scammers, upon hearing the automated voice, seemed to perceive the AI assistant as a "scammer" themselves and promptly disconnected, effectively filtering out unwanted solicitations. The naturalness of the AI’s voice and its ability to intelligently process caller intent are commendable, making it a powerful deterrent against telemarketing and phishing attempts.

Another standout AI feature, surprisingly under-promoted by Samsung, is the updated Audio Eraser. Integrated into One UI 8.5, this tool now operates in real-time across a wide array of applications, including popular streaming platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Users can toggle a setting to drastically reduce background noise in any video they are streaming. This is a godsend for anyone watching user-generated content, such as concert fancams plagued by enthusiastic crowd noise, or interviews conducted in bustling environments. The technology likely employs sophisticated AI models to distinguish human speech or primary audio from ambient sounds, effectively isolating and suppressing unwanted distractions, thus significantly enhancing the listening experience.

Photo Assist also receives a notable upgrade, now allowing users to edit images simply by typing out desired changes. This goes beyond basic filters, potentially leveraging generative AI to perform complex tasks like object removal, repositioning, or even stylistic transformations, offering a more intuitive and powerful editing workflow without requiring extensive manual adjustments.

The Privacy Display: Innovation vs. Practicality

The much-touted Privacy Display is a built-in feature designed to safeguard sensitive information from prying eyes. When activated, it intelligently dims the S26 Ultra’s screen, making its contents nearly impossible for those viewing from oblique angles to discern. This technology is likely a software-driven solution that selectively reduces the brightness and adjusts the pixel orientation at specific angles, similar to privacy filters found on laptops.

In extensive real-world testing across various environments – indoors, outdoors, and at crowded events – the Privacy Display performed admirably. Friends tasked with "peeping" from the sides consistently confirmed that they could not decipher what was on the screen, affirming its effectiveness in its stated purpose.

However, two significant caveats emerged. Firstly, the feature is primarily effective against side-glancers. If someone were to view the phone directly over the user’s shoulder, the screen contents would likely remain visible, depending on the device’s tilt. Secondly, activating Privacy Display, especially on its maximum privacy setting, causes a noticeable dimming of the screen. While this doesn’t impede the phone’s overall usability, the difference in brightness is stark, making the display significantly less vibrant. This trade-off between privacy and visual fidelity is a critical consideration for users.

The core dilemma, however, lies in its value proposition. Is an integrated, customizable privacy feature worth paying upwards of S$1,828, when a physical privacy screen guard offering similar, albeit less dynamic, protection can be purchased for around S$10? While the S26 Ultra offers enhanced customization, such as the ability to automatically activate Privacy Display for specific apps, the question of whether this convenience justifies the substantial price difference remains subjective. For those with extreme privacy concerns in public spaces, the integrated solution offers seamlessness, but for the average user, the cost-effectiveness of a physical accessory might be more appealing.

Verdict on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: A Polished All-Rounder

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is undeniably a superb all-rounder, representing the culmination of Samsung’s current smartphone philosophy. It excels across almost every major category, delivering a premium experience. However, it’s also no secret that Samsung has increasingly focused its innovation on software optimization and AI integration, with hardware upgrades becoming more incremental. This strategy means that many of the S26 Ultra’s star software features, particularly AI enhancements, are likely to trickle down to older flagship devices via future software updates. Consequently, for users upgrading from a relatively recent Ultra model (S24 or S25), the "giant leap" promised by a new generation might feel more like a "small step." The unique hardware-dependent upgrades, while impressive, may not necessitate an immediate change from a perfectly functional, recent device unless one has the disposable income to spare or a compelling need for the absolute latest technology.

For those whose current phone is in dire need of an upgrade, the S26 Ultra offers an amazing experience. It doesn’t necessarily achieve "best-in-class" status for every single feature when pitted against highly specialized rivals (e.g., a dedicated camera phone might offer marginally superior zoom, or a gaming phone might have a higher refresh rate). However, what the S26 Ultra delivers is consistently excellent performance across the board, positioning it firmly within the top percentile of current Android phones. Its blend of a powerful processor, an incredibly versatile camera system (when fully explored), genuinely useful AI features, and outstanding battery life makes it a compelling choice for those seeking a comprehensive, no-compromise smartphone experience.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is now available for purchase via Samsung’s official website and at other retail outlets. Recommended retail prices for the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra start at S$1,828.