Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event has come and gone, and there were some exciting announcements about a number of products, though primarily the Galaxy S26 and some of its more intriguing features. As with just about everything at the moment, AI was prominently featured, and the S26 will do it better than any Samsung phones that came before. But that’s not all that was on show.
The biggest feature was the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s long-rumored Privacy Display. Designed to prevent people from reading over your shoulder, it works by controlling how the OLED display emits light. When turned on, it physically prevents the wider OLED pixels from shining out to the sides, restricting the viewing angle and making it much harder for anyone else to read what is on your screen. You can tweak it through the software too, adjusting it to hide notifications or certain apps—for example, when you’re managing your bank account.
Performance has improved with this generation, thanks to the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in each S26 model. The standard S26 and S26+ each come with 12GB of RAM, while the S26 Ultra enjoys the full 16GB if you want, or you can opt for 12GB instead. Samsung claims that its version of this chip is faster than others, with higher clock speeds and enhancements to power management and camera performance, all of which are said to be better on Samsung. We’ll see when the phones are available for third-party testing.
All in all, Samsung claims its CPU is 19% faster than the last-gen, the GPU 24% faster, while the NPU is close to 40% faster.
Charging speed is also increased, with the S26 Ultra now able to charge 75% of its 5,000 mAh battery in just 30 minutes. That’s a smaller battery than you’ll find on some flagships, but it’s slightly larger than the 4,900 mAh battery in the S26 and S26+. As people get their hands on these new devices, we’ll see if the rumors are true about the S26’s battery health paling in comparison with its predecessor.
The displays on each phone are now 10-bit OLED, but that’s about it. The S26 Ultra has a 200MP main camera sensor and a 50MP 5x optical zoom camera lens. There’s also better noise reduction in night mode, and the built-in gimbal for the “horizon lock” will help keep your footage level.
AI performance has been boosted by new capabilities. The AI-editor in the photo app now offers many more editing options through generative capabilities, and Gemini is available with agentic capabilities. You can ask it to run apps and perform tasks in the background for you, while you go about your day.
Other AI capabilities include a new audio eraser for stripping out background sound from your videos, document scanning, screenshot analyzing, contextual keyboard tweaks to give you access to information you might need, improved call screening as they have on Pixel and iPhone devices, improved scam detection, and Bixby integration with Perplexity’s large language models for more nuanced support.
You can pre-order the Galaxy S26 now, with prices starting at $900 ($100 higher than before, likely due to RAM pricing). The S26+ starts at $1,100, while the flagship S26 Ultra is $1,300 for the base model.
Samsung also announced that the new Galaxy Buds4 will start at $179, while the Buds4 Pro are $249. Both will arrive on March 11.
