Name: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Review: There's a Catch
Uploaded: 2026-03-07T21:42:13.000Z
Duration: 12 min 36 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Sam, You know, we can still hear what you're.

You might remember all my impressions of this phone were based on footage of it before actually getting to hold it in person.

And those impressions were pretty positive.

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-inch big OLED display, 1440p resolution, 1-120Hz, et cetera.

But they've added this one massive new feature, the privacy display.

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 blackout incoming notifications, which is incredible.

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 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.

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'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 in 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 looking displays that you can get for 1300 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.

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 S pen 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

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 the 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.

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.

But yeah, the performance is generally it's great.

Can it handle heavy multitasking and gaming?

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 5000 milliamp hour 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.

if you're a subscriber, you probably know exactly where I'm about to go with this.

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.

Hughes's 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 because 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.