Samsung's new S26 lineup introduces incremental hardware updates, a notable price increase across the board, and a significant focus on AI features, with the S26 Ultra featuring a unique hardware-based Privacy Display.
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Yo, what's up? MKBHD here,
and welcome to what was supposed to be your first look and hands-on with
the new Samsung phones this year.
Unfortunately, that is in California,
and it just snowed like two-plus feet here,
and that shut down all the flights for like two days.
So, I'm still here!...
and that's still in California. Thankfully,
Brandon from the team did actually get all the way out to California
from a city that got way less snow.
And so he's seen the phones, and he shot the footage of them,
he sent it back to me.
I've got the spec sheets here,
so I'm going to put it all together and we'll still take a first look together...
at what looks like a kind of interesting new set of phones from Samsung.
And so as expected, the designs—well,
they're pretty similar to last year with just some slightly new colors
and a slightly different looking camera ring with this little
extra plateau around them now. But actually,
the first thing that stuck out to me is just the new prices.
Typically I'll just save that for the end because it's the same as last year,
but not this time...
This time, the S26 is $900, the S26+ is $1,100,
and the S26 Ultra is $1,300.
So this comes with a bump up in base storage.
So if you remember,
last year the S25 launched at $799 and was 128 gigs.
This year, the S26 is $899, but it's also 256 gigs.
But then also, the S26+...
is 256 gigs and it's 100 bucks more.
It's $1,100 instead of $1,000...
And then the Ultra was $1,300, it's $1,300 again.
You know,
they've always come out with the Fan Edition later in the
year as like the mid-range
priced version of the phone,
but it feels like they're making room for that now to be like an $800 phone.
So just a lot of price creep happening in this lineup.
So then if that's the context for these new phones,
then what is actually new to justify this new price?
Well,
they all got the spec bump we expected: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy.
We've seen this non-Galaxy version of the chip be excellent already,
and there's a lot of talk about NPU optimization for AI
stuff on the Samsung one.
More on that in a minute, but looks like a good chip.
And then the Ultra specifically is also
a slightly updated design,
so it's a little bit thinner now and a little bit less boxy and squared off...
It's also back to aluminum sides instead of titanium,
and they've redesigned the vapor chamber to fit in this thinner design.
And there's also now slightly faster charging across the lineup.
Nothing dramatic, but
25 watts on the S26, 45 watts on the S26+, and 60 watts on the Ultra.
And then pretty much all the rest of the hardware changes are just on the Ultra,
which now has...
slightly wider apertures on those otherwise unchanged primary and telephoto
cameras just to let more light in.
So looks like we're going from f/1.7 to 1.4 on the main
and f/3.4 to 2.4 on the 3X.
Pretty modest hardware changes, I would say.
Still no magnets
and still no silicon-carbon batteries.
But there is one...
really cool feature to me,
and it's just in the Ultra phone, and it's the new Privacy Display...
feature.
So I saw leaks of this;
I didn't want to look into it too much, but now that it's real and I've seen this—
at least the footage of it—it looks incredible.
So,
you know those privacy screen protectors people put on their
phones to kind of block others...
from seeing what's on their screen?
Probably seen one on someone else's phone at some point...
They look kind of horrible.
So instead of that privacy screen protector,
which is annoying and also always on,
this is a hardware-level control
over...
the pixels on the display that can be turned on or off whenever.
And when you turn it on...
the display should look unchanged from straight on,
but as you get off-axis, it actually...
fades to gray and almost black...
from both the horizontal axis and vertical axis.
So you're still seeing a normal display from the straight-on view,
but anyone trying to look over your shoulder or sitting next to you
will see basically a blank screen.
That's genuinely really sick! And hey,
I'm not gonna judge why you need this or what you're blocking on your screen,
but there is actually a pretty good amount of customization over how exactly
this works or when you can use it.
So you can turn it on or off, obviously, which is already sick,
but you can also have it automatically enable
in certain locations or for certain apps,
like just for your banking app or just for your...
photos app. It can even be
parts of the screen...
So just for the password field,
while you're filling in a password somewhere,
it will just black out that...
or just for the top part of the screen where notifications come in...
It will do just that.
I just think, I think this is awesome!
This also to me, if you think about it, is like the most...
Samsung thing ever.
Like, like Samsung for the past couple years,
as we know,
has been super conservative with these like flagship phones,
especially with the design...
But they're also the same company that will try absolutely insane stuff,
like the Galaxy Note Edge back in the day where like one side of the display curved
over the bezel for the first time,
and then that turned into the other Galaxy S edges where
both sides melted over.
They did the Galaxy Note first, which is this huge display,
and then of course Galaxy Fold, which is super early and risky.
And now they have a literal tri-fold, which is nuts!
And all of these things,
all these crazy designs that they decide to try are all based around...
display innovations...
so curved screen, waterfall screen,
multiple folding screen, and now this privacy screen.
So like,
this feels like a very Samsung thing to try,
and I hope it catches on,
because I know if any other company was trying this,
their fans would all be loving it too...
I just hope this finds some success in the Ultra and then
starts making its way...
to other phones, because it's sick. So then,
most of the rest of what's new in this S26 lineup is—I mean,
you're going to see commercials with it.
I'm guessing most of the keynote is going to have a lot of this...
It's AI features
and they range from
decently useful to... full-on slop.
Like they're just trying a bunch of stuff.
They managed to clone over some of Google's biggest hits from the Pixel,
like call screening, which is welcome...
They also added their own version of Magic Queue,
which they're calling
now Nudge,
which basically lives in the keyboard and gives you suggestions of things
to bring in from other apps.
It's context-aware;
it should be decently helpful.
And there's also some big claimed improvements with
Bixby now being LLM-powered.
We've seen some other companies struggle with that lately,
but you know,
with some Gemini integrations and some new Perplexity integrations could be...
decent.
I mean,
I'm not going to say anything until I try it,
but you know, new Bixby... could be good.
But then they also did something called Photo Assist,
which,
which is essentially what Google did with Google Photos.
It's like... AI photo editing...
but built into the gallery,
which
it's cool tech. I don't know if it's selling any phones.
It'll probably be a software update for older phones,
but
they did that. They also did...
Creative Studio, which is
kind of the same thing as, like, Apple's Image Playground.
Borderline useless in my opinion. but like I said,
it feels like they're just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall in the world
of AI just to see what will stick,
see what people will like.
They're actually calling it an AI phone in some of the press
stuff that I've seen for it,
which I don't love.
I feel like in an age where it's...
more important than ever to get real photos and videos
from people's cell phones,
the slippery slope of, like, all this AI stuff in our photos...
it's weird.
I'm not sure I love how far down the slope we're going,
but... here we are.
Anyway, no real massive surprises.
These all very much look and and feel like Samsung phones,
where most of the differences are just, like,
the small quality-of-life things under the skin and subtle evolution over time.
This is not one of their big Hail Marys.
My take is the Ultra feels like a little bit of a refresh and it's a cool place
to try this privacy screen thing.
I'm very excited to... see it...
in person and try it out...
looks pretty sick!
The base phones going up by a hundred bucks.
Not so excited about that...
seems like they didn't try a whole lot of other stuff with—with those phones.
But let me know what else you want to see in the full reviews
in the comments section below. And of course,
get subscribed to see the reviews as soon as they come out,
because that's
what the button is for.
If you're planning on grabbing an S26 Ultra,
would you rather have a case for it that looks like
this
or a case
that looks like this?
Because if you've never used a Ghost case from channel sponsor dbrand before,
the main thing to call out is that unlike pretty much every other clear case,
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they'll literally replace your Ghost for free for life...
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it's got all the other features you'd expect from a dbrand case: super strong
magnets since the phone doesn't have them,
clicky buttons, and up to 10 feet of drop protection.
You know, just in case...
And fun fact: even though Samsung just announced the phone,
and super rugged Tank case—are all available and shipping now.
Plus,
if you want to pick up a screen protector while you're at it,
you can save 15% by bundling their Prism screen protector with any case.
They're super easy to install, they include two in the pack, and yes,
it does work with the new privacy display.
So dbrand's new S26 lineup is available on their site and
nationwide at Best Buy in the US.
I'll leave a link down below if you want to check them out,
but thanks for watching.
Let me know what you think.
Catch you guys in the next one.
peace!
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