Privacy, pen and more

Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra - Most versatile

Once again, Samsung's flagship is a phone that can do more than most. From the privacy screen to the integrated pen, cameras, software, and proprietary apps.

Published 2 April 2026 - 10:45

With the S26 Ultra comes a new feature that this phone alone has. It is a protection for prying eyes and it is called Privacy View. It limits the viewing angle so that you can still see what is on the screen when you look at it from the front, but it becomes significantly harder for someone looking from the side to see what is displayed. This can be activated either generally, it is a quick and easy toggle in the quick settings, but you can also activate it for individual apps or for notifications, for example, so only part of the screen is affected.

The advantage compared to a physical filter you put over the screen is mainly the options and that it can be controlled smartly in this way. Privacy View can be activated automatically when you need to enter a password in the phone's settings, when you enter a PIN or pattern, but it does not automatically detect password fields and activate, for example, in the browser. Then how much real benefit you get from this feature is up to you to decide, of course. I can personally think that mobile thefts often start with someone seeing you enter the PIN, so there is a clear benefit in hiding it. Then I can personally think of few occasions when I look at sensitive information in such cramped spaces that prying eyes are ever a real problem. Regardless, it is good that the option for privacy is available here in a convenient way.

Since this function is managed at the subpixel level on the screen, combined with the software, the brightness when the function is active becomes noticeably lower, but not to the extent that it poses a major problem. With the function turned off, the screen is both sharp, bright, and just as good as we are used to in Samsung's flagship phones. In recent years, several competitors have also released phones with high-quality screens, so Samsung is not as superior as they once were, but still at the top.

Battery life surprisingly good

If screens are something Samsung has long been a leader in, as they also supply screens to most competitors, they are noticeably behind when it comes to the latest battery technology. And we have received indications that this is a conscious choice. Competitors like Xiaomi, Oneplus, and especially Honor and Oppo have released phones with significantly higher capacity by using silicon-carbon technology, and Samsung has said that this new technology is not sufficiently confirmed to be safe and stable. Therefore, Samsung continues with lithium-ion and a battery capacity of a more moderate 5000 mAh. My conclusion is, in any case, that Samsung has a well-tuned and energy-efficient system because the battery life in our tests is on par with several other phones with significantly higher battery capacity.

Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra and its predecessors have looked roughly the same for several years. When I compare this phone side by side with last year's S25 Ultra, the phone has a slightly more rounded profile and the corners are now a little less pronounced. There have been reports of users getting holes in their jeans because the phone's corners have worn through the fabric. We also notice that the S26 Ultra now has the same design as the rest of the S26 series' S26 and S26 Plus, so they are more of a unified family. Still, the S26 Ultra clearly stands out in the lineup, among other things, through its cameras and with the pen, because at the bottom, in the lower left corner, we find the S-pen as usual. This pen is slightly less capable than it was in previous years' models, and since the S25, Bluetooth is missing here, so it cannot be used as a remote trigger for the camera, for example. With the S26 Ultra, the design of the pen is also updated, so it fits in its slot in only one way, as the top is rounded in the same way as the phone's corners and therefore fits nicely into the design.

We get the most use out of the pen for quick notes and drawings, but as digital maturity progresses, most of us probably write notes faster now with the on-screen keyboard than with a pen. The notes you write with the pen can at least be interpreted so you get editable text.

Established AI features the best

Other smart features are, if you ask Samsung, of course everything related to AI. Samsung is one of the manufacturers that has most frequently mentioned AI, but has also genuinely invested in the area. They even call their latest phones, from S24 onwards, AI phones. The most profiled of the services available is the direct translation, so you can have the conversation directly translated during phone calls or when you meet someone face to face. Since late 2024, the translation has also been available in Swedish, and in the summer of 2025, the ability to record calls was introduced. All of this works in the S26 Ultra and the rest of the S26 series from the start. Additionally, there are quite a few sometimes useful editing tools for images, so you can, for example, remove distracting objects in your pictures.

Samsung also has its AI-generated updates in the form of Now Bar and Now Brief, which are supposed to pick relevant content from the calendar, weather, news, and more to give you a relevant selection. In previous S-series models, this has been almost terrible. Now Bar specifically demands attention, but then when I click in, it still only shows the weather forecast that I have already seen as its own widget on the home screen. Sometimes it suggests my playlist “Liked Songs” on Spotify and says “maybe you like this one”. In S26, this has thankfully received an upgrade, but it is still quite limited in usefulness. Despite having entered many calendar entries and using many connected apps frequently, the summary is watered down, and the new feature Now Nudge has not made its presence felt at all, despite my conscious attempts to get it to take the initiative. It is supposed to activate if, for example, someone asks about a meeting and proactively check if you are booked at the requested time, but despite several attempts, it never makes itself known.

There are also a couple of new possibilities, but many of them lack support for Swedish. Samsung's Galaxy AI has relied heavily on Google Gemini from the start, just like most other Android manufacturers do, but now they are introducing more AI services in parallel. Perplexity joins Google Gemini, and Samsung's own Bixby has also been added. Bixby does not understand Swedish and is mainly intended to handle settings on the phone. If you ask it something more advanced, it is handled by Perplexity. You can hold the quick button on the side of the phone from the start to call Google Gemini, but it can also be reconfigured so that you instead end up in Bixby or Perplexity. All services also have their own call phrases, like Hey Google and Hi Bixby. This can easily become a bit confusing, and I can easily imagine that users have difficulty knowing which one should do what. It highlights the technology as such when they should instead highlight the potential benefit and make the technology behind it invisible. The more mature, now more established services that took place two and one year ago respectively and now work in Swedish are still the ones that work best.

Excellent and slightly improved cameras

A flagship from Samsung would not be just that if it did not have competent cameras. Really good screen, integrated ecosystem, and customised software together with the cameras have characterised Samsung for a long time. Not much has happened in recent years. Mainly, the cameras in the S26 Ultra are the same as in the predecessor S25 Ultra, except that they take better pictures and film in the dark. I notice this clearly when I compare this year's and last year's flagships side by side. For those upgrading from a several-year-old phone, the difference will of course be more overwhelming. The S26 Ultra has fine colour reproduction and dynamic range, even in photographically challenging situations. When I compare it with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra in the dark, the phones are equal, but the Xiaomi, with its larger sensor, has areas where it provides better pictures.

The zoom in Galaxy S26 Ultra provides good details and quality up to around 50-60 times magnification, and with large zoom, I notice that it is largely post-processing that makes the image still good as it goes in and improves contrast, which otherwise can easily become uniformly grey.

Samsung is fundamentally a safe choice. Perhaps sometimes at the expense of a lack of experimental spirit, but the privacy screen is a breath of fresh air and otherwise you get well-organised functionality in the long term, primarily exemplified by Samsung providing seven years of updates and now also faster charging that we previously lacked.

Questions and answers

Does it have built-in magnets for wireless charging?

No, there is wireless charging at 25W, but for a magnetic mount, you need to buy a suitable case with that function.

Bixby, Gemini and Perplexity, which should I choose?

Here, Samsung has an educational task they don't really take on. When I test, I think Gemini can usually provide the best answers in general, and it can also speak Swedish, which Bixby cannot.

What doesn't work in Swedish?

Besides Bixby, there is a new call filtering feature that also doesn't work in Swedish yet. It might come, considering Samsung has invested so much in Swedish language support, although it might take a while. Perhaps late autumn?

An alternative

A cheap flagship is, for example, Oneplus 15. A more distinct and impressive camera phone is Xiaomi 17 Ultra.

Camera example

Improved images in the dark compared to before and overall versatile both as a camera and phone as a whole.

Review: Xiaomi 17 - Surprising camera phone

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