Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

Pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra started on 25 February 2026. The smartphone was made available to buy on 11 March 2026.

At time of launch, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is Samsung’s top smartphone – an AI-enabled phone with numerous upgraded features, both in terms of hardware and AI features. Key features you won’t want to miss out on include:

Chipset – Qualcomm Snapdragon® 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy

The S26 Ultra is equipped with the most powerful processor ever placed in a Galaxy smartphone, customised for Galaxy AI. Thanks to the newly designed vapour chamber with thermal interface material, intensive workflows or graphic-intensive apps won’t slow your device down. Heat dissipation is improved by up to 21% compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra

Think of the chipset as your phone’s ‘central nervous system’ – the part that keeps everything running smoothly. It helps your apps open quickly, keeps your battery working efficiently and makes sure that your camera, gaming and streaming all feel fast and responsive.

A good chipset doesn’t just make your phone run quicker– it also helps it stay reliable over time. It powers clever AI features, supports smoother multitasking and ensures your phone can take advantage of modern network tech such as fast 5G speeds. This matters even more when it comes to Samsung’s top-of-the-range flagship AI phone, which is optimised for gaming and working.

Screen – 6.9-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen with Privacy Display

The Galaxy S26 Ultra boasts a massive 6.9-inch AI display with a resolution of 3,120 x 1,440 pixels for immersive visuals. It shares various display features with the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus models:

• Adaptive Vision Booster – an AI capability that helps adjust the screen to different lighting conditions.

• ProScaler – also available on the Galaxy S26 Plus as Samsung’s upgraded AI-powered display technology that enhances lower-resolution content in real time to provide sharper, more lifelike visuals.

• 2,600 nits display brightness – this specification ensures clear visibility, even in harsh sunlight.

• 10-bit mDNIe – 10‑bit colour depth means the screen can show over 10 billion colours. This results in smoother gradients, richer tones and far fewer visible banding lines in skies, shadows or bright highlights.

• 1–120 Hz refresh rate – due to the adaptive refresh rate, the screen can automatically shift between very low and very high refresh rates.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra stands out from other S26 models, because it features the world’s first Privacy Display on mobile, which natively shields your screen from prying eyes while maintaining the same clear viewing experience.

Operating system – Android 16

Similarly to Samsung’s other flagship devices, the S26 range was also released with the latest Android OS version. This means that the Galaxy S26 Ultra ships with Android 16 at launch, with seven years of both OS and security upgrades guaranteed.

S Pen

Just like its predecessor, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is compatible with the S Pen. This is the only model in the Galaxy S26 Series that supports this functionality with the new, redesigned S Pen.

Like the other Galaxy S26 models, the S26 Ultra has an IP68 rating based on IEC 60529. The ‘6’ indicates the device is completely dust-tight, while the ‘8’ signifies water resistance in up to 1.5 metres of fresh water for up to 30 minutes. Note that resistance may decrease over time due to normal wear and tear, physical damage or environmental factors.

Upon its release, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is the most powerful Samsung phone and one of the best AI phones on the market. It’s slimmer, smarter and even more AI-powered than the previous Galaxy models.

Key upgrades include:

• An immersive AI display, serving as a Privacy Display with the improved ProScaler.

• Snapdragon® 8 Elite Gen 5 – the latest Qualcomm chipset, built specifically for Galaxy.

• Upgraded Galaxy AI features, including Now Nudge, which provides context-aware suggestions based on how you use your smartphone, and Photo Assist, which allows you to add, edit or remove objects within your photos in seconds.

• Upgraded Google Gemini features, including Gemini Live – a voice assistant understanding natural conversation. You can now share your screen or camera mid-conversation, and Gemini can provide context-aware suggestions for you, based on what it perceives.

• Enhanced Bixby – thanks to One UI 8.5 and Personal Data Engine at the core of the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Bixby is now able to understand requests spoken in a natural tone and scan your smartphone for information received in emails or text messages.

• Camera AI technology, with features like Nightography Video and Audio Eraser, supporting content creation in loud, low-light environments.

• Other camera capabilities, including aperture.

In photography, aperture refers to the opening in a camera lens that controls how much light reaches the sensor. It’s a critical specification for determining how well a smartphone camera performs in different environments. The size of the aperture is measured in f-stops (e.g., f1.8 or f2.2). A smaller f-stop number indicates a wider opening, which allows more light into the camera. This is particularly important for mobile photography as it enables clearer, brighter shots in low-light conditions. Aperture also dictates how much of the image is in focus. A wide aperture (lower f-number) creates a shallow field depth, which blurs the background while keeping the subject sharp – the classic look for professional portraits.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has a front camera and a quad-camera system, which includes:

• a 12MP front camera (f2.2),

• a 50MP ultra-wide lens (f1.9),

• a 200MP wide lens (f1.4) with 2x optical quality zoom,

• a 10MP telephoto lens (f2.4) with 3x optical zoom,

• a 50MP telephoto lens (f2.9) with 5X optical zoom and 10x optical quality zoom.

Compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the telephoto lens lets in 37% more light thanks to this upgrade.

For more in-depth breakdowns, see how the Galaxy S26 Ultra performs against the rest of the Galaxy smartphone range:

• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

• Samsung Galaxy S25 vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

• Samsung Galaxy S25+ vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

• Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

• Samsung Galaxy S26 vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is an AI phone, which means that it hosts a wide array of on-device and cloud-based AI features across Galaxy AI, Google Gemini and camera AI.

Galaxy AI

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has One UI 8.5 and Personal Data Engine at its core, which act as the ‘brain’ behind Bixby and several other Galaxy AI features, learning your habits and anticipating your needs.

Designed to act as a proactive personal assistant, Now Nudge studies your daily habits to offer tailored suggestions. It can intelligently scan your messages and history to surface forgotten appointments, old texts or specific media files, making them available to share in an instant.

Interacting with Bixby is now more intuitive, as it understands natural, flowing conversation. Rather than just giving you a verbal answer, the assistant shows you exactly how it’s carrying out your commands on-screen, from managing your calendar to retrieving the information you’re looking for from your emails.

Google Gemini

Fully embedded into the phone’s system, Google Gemini is instantly accessible via the side button, just as it was in the Galaxy S25 models. This integration allows the AI to work across your various apps to summarise documents, deconstruct complex files and offer context-specific help.

You can also use Circle to Search with Google to identify multiple objects simultaneously. With the latest upgrade, you can now share your camera or screen while brainstorming with Gemini Live so that it can offer troubleshooting support based on what the camera sees.

If you ever need a second AI opinion, the Galaxy S26 range comes with built-in Perplexity for fast and smart answers.

Camera AI

Beyond productivity, the Advanced ProVisual Engine significantly boosts your creative output. It’s Samsung’s AI-powered camera processing system, which enhances images through adaptive screen recognition, noise reduction and low-light enhancement, colour and dynamic range tuning and more.

Similarly to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the Galaxy S26 Ultra also supports Nightography Video, optimised for filming in low-light environments.

The AI Image Signal Processor works behind the scenes to sharpen textures and refine every detail of your selfies. For video creators, Audio Eraser can strip away distracting crowd noise to leave you with a clean recording, while Photo Assist provides professional-level control to move, remove or adjust objects within your images effortlessly.

For a detailed guide on smartphone intelligence and our top model picks, visit our dedicated AI phones page

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is explicitly engineered for high-performance tasks, making it one of the premier smartphones available for competitive gaming and fast bitrate streaming. Not every smartphone is built for these demanding activities – many consumer devices lack the specialised thermal management and sustained processing power required to run intensive games without lagging or overheating. For a seamless experience, a smartphone must balance raw speed with efficient hardware cooling and high-speed memory.

Processing power

The S26 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon® 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, featuring the fastest CPU in a Galaxy phone ever. For specialists, this means the Galaxy S26 Ultra uses a revolutionary CPU architecture that eliminates low-power efficiency cores in favour of high-speed clusters.

To prevent throttling – a safety mechanism where your smartphone intentionally slows down to prevent itself from overheating – the S26 Ultra features a newly designed vapour chamber with space-aged thermal interface material. By keeping the chipset cool, the device can maintain peak performance levels for hours of continuous gameplay without dropping frame rates or overheating, even in the most demanding gaming sessions.

Memory

Speed is not just about the processor – it also relies on RAM (Random Access Memory), which is your smartphone’s short-term memory. It acts as a high-speed workspace where the device stores the data it needs to access quickly and frequently. The S26 Ultra comes with up to 16GB RAM (1TB storage variant). At Vodafone, you can buy the Galaxy S26 Ultra with up to 512GB storage and 12GB RAM. This high-speed memory is essential for:

• Zero Latency – ensuring games load quickly and run without stuttering.

• Advanced multitasking – allowing you to run resource-heavy apps like Discord or YouTube in the background while you play, without the device closing them to save memory.

Display

For gaming, screen responsiveness is as critical as visual quality. The S26 Ultra features a 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a QHD+ resolution (3120 x 1440 pixels), equipped with the following:

• Adaptive 120Hz refresh rate: the screen dynamically adjusts from 1Hz to 120Hz. In fast-paced games, the high refresh rate ensures ultra-smooth motion.

• Peak brightness: with a peak brightness of 2,600 nits and the improved Adaptive Vision Booster, the display remains perfectly clear even when gaming in direct sunlight.

Battery life and endurance

The 5,000mAh battery is optimised to provide up to 30 hours of continuous video playback on a single charge. When you do run low, 60W super-fast charging and 25W super-fast wireless charging come to the rescue.

Yes, the Galaxy S26 Ultra offers a professional-grade toolkit that makes it one of the most capable devices on the market for social media and high-end content creation:

Camera system

The S26 Ultra features a sophisticated quad-camera setup, driven by the improved Advanced ProVisual Engine. This system provides a distinct advantage over rival flagships, thanks to the following details:

• 200MP main camera: using an advanced AI Image Signal Processor (ISP), it captures incredible detail, even in challenging light. The upgraded f1.4 aperture ensures superior night shots for after-dark content.

• Dual telephoto lenses: featuring 10MP and 50MP sensors, the camera system provides optical-quality zoom at 2x, 3x, 5x and 10x. This allows for high-quality close-ups without the pixelation seen on standard digital zooms.

• 50MP ultra-wide lens: perfect for expansive landscapes or tight interior shots, with enhanced edge-distortion correction.

Editing tools

• Photo Assist: add, edit or remove specific objects in your photos while AI intelligently fills the background.

• Instant Slow-mo: transform standard videos into smooth slow-motion clips using AI-generated frames.

• ProScaler: ensures that even lower-resolution source material is upscaled to QHD+ quality for a consistent, professional look across your social feeds.

Dimensions

Despite its large 6.9-inch display, the S26 Ultra remains surprisingly practical. With its full dimensions at 78.1 x 163.6 x 7.9mm, weighing 214g, the S26 Ultra is slimmer than any other Galaxy phone and surprisingly lightweight. The ergonomic grip also makes it comfortable to hold for long filming sessions or mobile editing.

Audio features and connectivity

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is equipped with a multi-mic array that supports Audio Eraser. This AI feature allows you to isolate your voice while removing distracting background noise like wind or traffic, ensuring your vlogs have professional audio. The smartphone supports 5G and WiFi7, which means that you can upload high bitrate 8K video to social platforms almost instantly, providing a much faster workflow than many competing devices.

Storage

High-resolution 4K and 8K video files require significant device memory. At Vodafone, the S26 Ultra is available in 256GB and 512GB variants. For reference, the 512GB model can store approximately 125,000 high-quality photos or over 10 hours of 8K video footage, making it a reliable choice for creators who don’t want to rely solely on cloud storage.

When compared to equivalent flagship models, the S26 Ultra stands out due to its unique integration of the S Pen for precise video timeline editing and its superior AI-driven zoom capabilities, offering more versatility for professional content creators.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra supports both physical nanoSIMs and eSIMs and it also features dual SIM capability, letting you use two numbers at the same time. You can use two physical SIMs or pair a physical SIM with an eSIM – ideal for keeping work and personal calls separate, using a local SIM when travelling or mixing networks and tariffs to suit your needs.

These capabilities highlight just how far SIM technology has come: from the original credit card-sized format to today’s tiny nanoSIMs, now to the eSIM – a digital SIM built directly into the phone’s hardware. Instead of inserting a physical card, an eSIM lets you download your mobile plan via a QR code or app, making it easy to switch providers, add a second number or activate a local plan abroad. For more details, check out everything you need to know about eSIM