Samsung Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra: Specs, Features, Price, Release Date

Feb 25, 2026 1:00 PM

Everything Samsung Announced at Galaxy Unpacked 2026

Samsung’s new phones all get AI enhancements, and the flagship Galaxy S26 Ultra has a Privacy Display that can block the screen from nosy neighbors.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Samsung's latest Galaxy smartphones—the Galaxy S26 series—are all about optimization and AI. Announced at its Galaxy Unpacked event in San Francisco, the phones are not hugely different from last year's Galaxy S25 models, but the company is hyping up performance optimizations that purportedly boost AI processing. Naturally, there are a bunch of new AI features baked into the phones too.

The headline hardware change is reserved for the top-tier Galaxy S26 Ultra: the Privacy Display. It prevents stray eyes from peeping over your shoulder at sensitive information on your screen—no need to apply a third-party privacy screen protector. The Ultra otherwise doesn't look as visually distinct next to the Galaxy S26+ and Galaxy S26; unlike the previous flagships, they now all share the same look.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Series

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The Galaxy S26 series is available for preorder now, with official sales kicking off on March 11. The Galaxy S26 and S26+ are getting a $100 price increase—likely due to a RAM bump, as RAM is expensive these days. They start at $900 and $1,100, respectively. The Galaxy S26 Ultra remains at the same price as its predecessor: $1,300. Samsung also unveiled a new pair of wireless earbuds, the Galaxy Buds4 ($179) and Buds4 Pro ($249), also arriving March 11. Here's everything you need to know.

The Privacy Display

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has something you've never seen on a smartphone: a built-in privacy screen. This is a hardware-driven feature; there are two types of pixels on the OLED panel, one that shoots light directly to your eyes, and another next to it that is wider, allowing the light to reach the sides. That allows you to view the screen from all angles. When the Privacy Display is enabled, the latter pixels are turned off, severely limiting what people around you can see. It's not just blocking the left and right sides of the smartphone like most two-way privacy screen protectors, but also the top and bottom.

What makes it more powerful than your usual privacy screen protector is that the Privacy Display can be customized via the software. You can toggle it on for the entire screen with a simple tap on the Quick Settings tile, or you can enable it for all incoming notifications, on a per-app basis, or for any app that requires a pin or passcode, like banking apps. Samsung says it'll even work with its Routines, so you can automatically turn it on via geolocation, like when you leave the office.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

I didn't notice a change in screen quality, but there is a small reduction in overall brightness (it wasn't a significant drop). Often with third-party privacy screen protectors, there's a dramatic reduction in brightness, and the screen can sometimes look fuzzy, but Samsung's solution neatly gets around those flaws. The benefits are immediately obvious. If you're looking at sensitive work documents on a plane, you won't have to worry about glances from the person next to you. Or maybe you're having a private conversation in a messaging app—those notifications will be much more difficult for someone next to you to read.

Performance, Optimized

You'll notice all three Galaxy S26 phones look visually identical this year. The Ultra isn't as boxy, and Samsung says this was to make the entire series feel more cohesive. The cameras no longer float on their own on the back—instead, a glass module wraps around them. The Galaxy S26 Ultra now uses aluminum instead of titanium, which helps make the phone 4 grams lighter, and also allows the device's color to shine through more consistently from the back to the edges.

Apple made a similar change from titanium to aluminum with its iPhone 17 Pro series, citing better thermal performance and a lighter smartphone. Samsung says that this is still the strongest version of its “Armor Aluminum” mixture yet, and the phone is also the slimmest Ultra it has ever made at 7.9 mm (a 0.3-mm difference from its predecessor). There's also a new design for the vapor chamber cooling system, which helps dissipate heat much faster, for better sustained performance during processor-sucking tasks, like gaming.

Galaxy S26	Galaxy S26+	Galaxy S26 Ultra
Display: 6.3 inches, 1-120-Hz LTPO, AMOLED, FHD+	6.7 inches, 1-120-Hz LTPO, AMOLED, QHD+	6.9 inches, 1-120-Hz LTPO, AMOLED, QHD+
Build: Armor Aluminum, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2	Armor Aluminum, Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic (front), Gorilla Glass Victus 2 (back)	Armor Aluminum, Corning Gorilla Armor 2 (front), Gorilla Glass Victus 2 (back)
Processor and RAM: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and 12 GB of RAM	Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and 12 GB of RAM	Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and 12 or 16 GB of RAM
Storage: 256 or 512 GB	256 or 512 GB	256 GB, 512 GB, or 1 TB
Battery: 4,300 mAh. 25-watt wired charging; 15-watt wireless charging	4,900 mAh. 45-watt wired charging; 20-watt wireless charging	5,000 mAh. 60-watt wired charging; 25-watt wireless charging
Cameras: 50-megapixel primary camera, 12-MP ultrawide, 10-MP 3X telephoto, 12-MP selfie	50-megapixel primary camera, 12-MP ultrawide, 10-MP 3X telephoto, 12-MP selfie	200-megapixel primary camera, 50-MP ultrawide, 50-MP 5X telephoto, 10-MP 3X telephoto, 12-MP selfie
Software updates: 7 years	7 years	7 years
Extras: Nonmagnetic Qi 2 wireless charging (Qi2 ready with case). IP68.	Nonmagnetic Qi 2 wireless charging (Qi2 ready with case). IP68.	Nonmagnetic Qi 2 wireless charging (Qi2 ready with case). IP68. S Pen Stylus. Privacy Display.
Colors: Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, Black, White (Online exclusive: Silver Shadow, Pink Gold)	Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, Black, White (Online exclusive: Silver Shadow, Pink Gold)	Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, Black, White (Online exclusive: Silver Shadow, Pink Gold)
Price: $900	$1,100	$1,300

Speaking of performance, Samsung says the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset “For Galaxy” goes further than previous collaborations between the company and chipmaker Qualcomm. It's not just an increase in clock speed compared to other phones using the same chip, but there are deeper customizations that enhance everything, from camera performance to power management. If you want specifics, it's a 19 percent faster CPU, 24 percent faster GPU, and 39 percent faster neural processing unit (NPU), the latter of which focuses on AI tasks.

On the battery front, Samsung has improved charging speeds, but that's largely it. The Galaxy S26 Ultra can go from zero to 75 percent in 30 minutes, though you'll need to buy a 60-watt charging adapter to take advantage. (Samsung, along with most smartphone manufacturers, stopped including the power adapter in the box several years ago.) There are no wired charging speed improvements to the S26 and S26+, though the latter model enjoys a wireless charging speed bump to 20 watts. The Ultra can now also charge at 25 watts wirelessly.

Unfortunately, Samsung still doesn't offer built-in magnets for native Qi2 wireless charging capability. Unlike Google's Pixel 10 phones, Samsung's Galaxy S26 series remains “Qi2 Ready," meaning you need to use a first- or third-party case with a magnetic ring for Qi2 charging speeds. Samsung is also still shying away from silicon-carbon battery technology that packs denser batteries without making the phone thicker, despite widespread use by its Chinese competitors. The OnePlus 15, for example, has a massive 7,300-mAh battery cell that lasts two full days of use, but the Galaxy S26 Ultra still taps out at 5,000 mAh.

There are some minor upgrades to other parts of the hardware. All of these phones now feature 10-bit OLED displays, meaning each pixel is capable of producing up to a billion colors for a more vivid screen experience. On the cameras, the main 200-megapixel sensor on the Ultra, along with its 50-megapixel 5X optical zoom camera utilize wider apertures (with the same sensors as the previous generation), so they can capture brighter images. In Night Mode, there's better noise reduction, and in video capture, Samsung's Super Steady mode for capturing action scenes now has a “horizon lock” to keep your footage level even if the phone tilts or rotates. There are a few other minor improvements like this.

A Galactic AI Fest

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Samsung spent most of its time on an array of new AI capabilities on its Galaxy S26 smartphones. Much like Google's conversational photo editor that debuted in Google Photos last year, Samsung's “Photo Assist” lets you use natural language in the Gallery app to make edits. If someone ate a slice of cake before you snapped the photo, you can play god and ask Samsung's AI to make the cake whole again. Ask it to change the background of your selfie to a skyline or a brick wall. Nothing is real anymore.

It's multimodal, so you can choose another picture in the gallery and ask the AI to add it to an image. For example, take a picture of a hat and ask the AI editor to add it to your selfie. In my demo, the hat didn't fully cover my head on the first attempt, but it looked OK on the next try.

There's a new app called Creative Studio, somewhat similar to Google's Pixel Studio, which arrived on the Pixel 9 in 2024. You can generate sticker packs based on a picture you capture and use natural language to specify what kind of stickers you want. It's not just stickers, but also wallpapers, contact cards, and even greeting cards.

The most interesting AI addition is automated app actions powered by Google's Gemini. This is one of the first times we're seeing Gemini run through a task for a third-party app on Android. You can ask Gemini to book you an Uber to the airport, and it'll launch the app and run it in the background—going through the motions as you would to make the booking. You can even see the process play out if you're bored (it'll otherwise sit in your notification drawer as a live notification). It'll ping you when it's ready, and that's when you can complete the booking after verifying prices.

Google says these automations will start with select apps in the US and South Korea: Uber, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub. You can read more about this feature here.

Here's a glance at a few other AI features Samsung is hyping up:

• Audio Eraser: This existing feature strips out background sounds from your video footage, but now in the Galaxy S26 series, you can turn it on when watching a video via a streaming app like Netflix or Instagram. If a content creator filmed a YouTube Short in a busy environment and you're having trouble hearing them, for example, Audio Eraser can cut background noise and boost their voice.
• Document scanner: Samsung has souped up the document scanner experience in the camera app with Galaxy AI. Now, it'll remove fingers if you're holding up a document, erase creases, folds, and shadows, and minimize distortion so that the document looks tidy before you convert it to a PDF.
• Screenshots: Galaxy AI will now analyze what's actually in your screenshots and organize them into eight categories, ranging from boarding passes and events to social media or coupons. They'll be easier to find when searching, much like with Google's Pixel Screenshots app.
• Now Nudge: Baked into Samsung's keyboard, you'll now see proactive information appear on the keyboard based on the context of what you're doing. In a conversation, for example, if someone asks you to send photos from a trip, you'll see a button on the keyboard that, if tapped, will take you to the gallery app and pull up relevant pictures you'll want to send. It works similarly to Google's Magic Cue feature on Pixel phones.
• Now Brief: Samsung's largely useless AI-powered information hub might finally get more useful—if you're willing to give it access to all of your notifications. If you grant it that access, it can add that personalized information into one place.
• Call Screening: Much like the call-screening capability on Pixel phones and iPhones, Samsung will now screen calls with its AI assistant, and you can then choose whether to answer.
• Scam Detection: Google recently added real-time scam detection capabilities to Android, and Samsung is implementing it into its phones. During a phone call, you'll be able to have Galaxy AI analyze whether the caller is leading you to common traps.
• Bixby: Yes, it still exists. Samsung is using Perplexity's large language models to soup up its OG voice assistant. Bixby is still largely designed to help you figure out issues or settings with your phone, so if you tell it that your eyes feel strained, it will suggest some settings to change that could help.

New Buds

Samsung Galaxy Buds4 Pro

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Also in tow alongside the Galaxy S26 smartphones are new wireless earbuds: the Galaxy Buds4 series. They largely keep the AirPod-like stem design from their predecessors, but less Cybertrucky. Like every headphone manufacturer, Samsung says it “analyzed millions of ear shapes” to find the right design that's both comfortable and stable. Like before, the Buds4 don't have ear tips and mimic standard AirPods, whereas the Buds4 Pro feature ear tips and are more akin to AirPods Pro.

Samsung has added an “engraved” area on the stem so it's easier to figure out where to pinch to make quick interactions with the buds. The Buds4 Pro feature a wider woofer, which effectively increases the speaker area by roughly 20 percent, which should mean better overall audio quality. The active noise cancellation has improved, providing real-time adjustments based on your environment to let certain sounds through while blocking others. And like Google's Pixel Buds Pro 2, you can use head gestures—nod to accept a call, shake to decline.

Julian Chokkattu is Senior Editor, Gear at WIRED, overseeing personal technology, gadgets, and gizmos. He has been reviewing consumer products for a decade, specializing in mobile—from smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches to smart glasses and virtual reality. This is his sixth year at WIRED. Previously, he was the mobile and wearables ... Read More

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