[00:00] People, prepare. Today we present Samsung's&nbsp; pristine and premium S26 Ultra—a polished,&nbsp;&nbsp; pocketized powerhouse packed with&nbsp; potent processing, privacy pixels,&nbsp;&nbsp; and plenty of prestige. It'll presently&nbsp; be pressured with painstaking poking,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:16] prodding, prying, and un poquito of peeling&nbsp; to see if the polished paint on this pricey&nbsp;&nbsp; piece of personal preference prevails. Perhaps&nbsp; parts pop, or perhaps portions persevere. So,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:28] prepare your popcorn as we pontificate on its&nbsp; performance. The punishment procedure proceeds. The coolest part of this S26 Ultra is probably&nbsp; the privacy screen. I personally probably&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:40] wouldn't use it a whole lot since it does dim the&nbsp; screen considerably, as you'll see in a second.&nbsp;&nbsp; But first, I noticed that instead of a similarly&nbsp; colored piece of glass around the camera plateau,&nbsp;&nbsp; Samsung has stuck a milky clear glass under the&nbsp; circles instead. You can see the way the plateau&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:56] glows and illuminates as I shine my flashlight&nbsp; into it. And we can also see there's still a&nbsp;&nbsp; tiny gap between the lens and the translucent&nbsp; portion. I imagine this means the circular lenses&nbsp;&nbsp; are removable. We'll have to find out here&nbsp; for sure in just a second, as we always do.
[01:12] It would be epic of Samsung if they could turn&nbsp; this translucent plateau into a notification of&nbsp;&nbsp; some kind, like how the smartphone brand Nothing&nbsp; does. I don't know if an internally glowing camera&nbsp;&nbsp; island would help justify the $1,300 price point&nbsp; or not, but it would still look pretty cool.
[01:27] The part that bothers me the most about&nbsp; the privacy display is how dim it gets&nbsp;&nbsp; when maximum privacy protection is turned&nbsp; on. I mean, it works for sure—100%. I have&nbsp;&nbsp; an angle finder here that can tell the&nbsp; exact angle at which a person might be&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:41] able to still see your screen. And with max&nbsp; privacy mode enabled, it's basically a 45°&nbsp;&nbsp; window of visibility from the side. Without&nbsp; privacy mode, anyone standing within an 80°&nbsp;&nbsp; radius can basically see your screen. Privacy&nbsp; mode cuts the viewing angle visibility in half.
[01:57] If I were to get an S26 Ultra, which I probably&nbsp; won't, I would probably just turn on the privacy&nbsp;&nbsp; notifications. This is where a text or email comes&nbsp; in, and the only portion of the screen that gets&nbsp;&nbsp; dimmed or blacked out is the notification&nbsp; text itself. Really incredible isolation.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:13] iPhone users are going to be ecstatic&nbsp; when Apple invents this in a few years. Busting out the microscope, you can see that&nbsp; Samsung basically has two types of pixels:&nbsp;&nbsp; narrow pixels and wide-angle pixels. Normally&nbsp; all of them are turned on and working together&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:27] for the full 1440p screen resolution.&nbsp; But as soon as privacy mode is enabled,&nbsp;&nbsp; we lose about half the pixels—all&nbsp; the wide-angled ones—leaving just&nbsp;&nbsp; the narrow beams of light meant for your&nbsp; eyes only. Now, this shouldn't affect&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:40] the scratch resistance of the screen, but&nbsp; there's only one way to find out for sure. Pulling out the S Pen—this guy is about the same&nbsp; length as last year, but it's definitely a lot&nbsp;&nbsp; thinner this time around. The shape of the back&nbsp; end is also curved, so it does matter which way it&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:54] goes into the phone. But it is nice knowing that&nbsp; it does not get stuck if it goes in backwards like&nbsp;&nbsp; it used to on the original Samsung Note 5, which&nbsp; came out about 10 years ago. If you remember that&nbsp;&nbsp; phone, I do promise that stretching at night&nbsp; will help your lower back not hurt so much.
[03:09] The cool thing about the S Pen is that it has&nbsp; a roll of copper coils in the tip. These help&nbsp;&nbsp; the digitizer behind the phone screen better&nbsp; triangulate its position. It makes the stylus&nbsp;&nbsp; more exact. About two or three years ago with&nbsp; the S24 Ultra, the S Pen had a capacitor inside&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:25] that would wirelessly charge off the copper&nbsp; coils, but that capacitor and the capacity to&nbsp;&nbsp; charge has since been eliminated. There are no&nbsp; more Bluetooth functionalities with the S Pen&nbsp;&nbsp; this year either—just a little spring in the top&nbsp; that lets the pen click in and out of the phone.
[03:40] Back to the scratch test. Samsung is using&nbsp; Corning Gorilla Armor 2 on the S26 Ultra.&nbsp;&nbsp; Plastic would normally scratch at a level two&nbsp; or three, but tempered glass like we see here&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:54] scratches at a level six with deeper grooves at&nbsp; a level seven. But for some reason, that doesn't&nbsp;&nbsp; appear to be the case this time around. It is&nbsp; the same piece of branded glass as last year,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:06] but this year the level six scratches are&nbsp; extremely difficult to find. They are there,&nbsp;&nbsp; but barely. We're almost getting to&nbsp; the point where we can't say the thing. One mistake that I'll never make again, though,&nbsp; is not having a screen protector on my phone. I&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:20] cracked the glass on my S24 Ultra a few months&nbsp; ago and ended up spending nearly $300 to get a&nbsp;&nbsp; genuine AMOLED screen replacement reinstalled on&nbsp; my phone, and that was doing it myself. A screen&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:32] protector would have saved me. So, not having&nbsp; a screen protector is a very expensive mistake&nbsp;&nbsp; that I won't be making again. I'll just pop&nbsp; the S Pen back into the slot where it belongs. sponsors—is that it even works with privacy&nbsp; mode. They come two to a box and are foolproof&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:51] to install. And of course, they are made with&nbsp; real glass. Link is down in the description. It's also interesting to find out that&nbsp; Samsung ditched titanium this year.&nbsp;&nbsp; We're back to using armor aluminum, which&nbsp; I'm actually okay with. The buttons are&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:06] still removable. Titanium is cool and all,&nbsp; but aluminum gets the job done just fine,&nbsp;&nbsp; and it's easier to work with and easier&nbsp; to recycle at the end of its life. Now,&nbsp;&nbsp; the entire phone frame is made with just one&nbsp; metal and not two separate metals glued together.
[05:22] The bottom of the phone has our 60W&nbsp; USB-C port as well as our SIM card tray,&nbsp;&nbsp; and it has a gray rubber ring to help with the&nbsp; IP68 waterproof rating. There's no expandable&nbsp;&nbsp; really long time but also doesn't like to&nbsp; delete stuff. The logo on the back glass&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:40] looks impressively etched. Apple could learn&nbsp; a few things about glass etching from Samsung. And moving up to the camera plateau, we have&nbsp; our top 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera&nbsp;&nbsp; protected with glass. Then our 200-megapixel&nbsp; camera, also with glass. And at the bottom,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:56] our 50-megapixel five-times telephoto camera&nbsp; that we took apart during the teardown. If you&nbsp;&nbsp; want to see Samsung's new 37% improved ALOP design&nbsp; that they didn't tell anyone about, feel free to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:09] watch the teardown video after this one. Then we&nbsp; have the 10-megapixel 3x telephoto and the laser&nbsp;&nbsp; autofocus on the side. The single-tone&nbsp; LED flash is also protected with glass. I know I gave Samsung some grief about the&nbsp; lenses popping off on last year's phone,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:24] but this year I think they fixed it. Yeah,&nbsp; they still come off, but this time around&nbsp;&nbsp; it's almost like they're supposed to. The&nbsp; rings come off with the glass still intact,&nbsp;&nbsp; which means if you were to crack the&nbsp; glass on one of your camera lenses,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:37] it might just be a $10 fix that still keeps your&nbsp; IP rating intact, especially since the lenses&nbsp;&nbsp; just click right back into place. I'm impressed.&nbsp; Samsung took a flaw and turned it into a feature.&nbsp;&nbsp; Huge thumbs up from me, but let me know&nbsp; what you think down in the comments.
[06:52] The screen itself has basically remained&nbsp; the same as last year. Still 1440p if you&nbsp;&nbsp; don't have privacy mode engaged, still 2600&nbsp; nits if you don't have privacy mode engaged,&nbsp;&nbsp; and still 120 hertz. It lasts for about&nbsp; 20 seconds under the heat from my lighter&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:07] without any major damage to the pixels. Samsung&nbsp; has continued with the under-display ultrasonic&nbsp;&nbsp; fingerprint scanner, but again, for some&nbsp; reason, my level seven deeper grooves&nbsp;&nbsp; just ain't slapping like they used to. I&nbsp; imagine Corning tweaked something in the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:20] glass recipe since last year because it's&nbsp; holding its own against my picks quite a&nbsp;&nbsp; bit better. The ultrasonic scanner still&nbsp; works even with the level seven scratches. Finally, the bend test. The only Samsung to ever&nbsp; fail this test, of course, is the Samsung Trifold,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:35] which is to be expected. And this S26 Ultra,&nbsp; even with the switch back to aluminum,&nbsp;&nbsp; is still a rock-solid beast of a smartphone&nbsp; with zero flex when bent from the front or&nbsp;&nbsp; when bent from the back. The only thing&nbsp; that will ever break this phone is a drop.
[07:51] And you might be like, "Hey, wow, that is the most&nbsp; manliestly, rugged case I've ever seen." And yeah,&nbsp;&nbsp; Dbrand took some creative liberties with the&nbsp; ultra-rugged Tank case. It's got more than a dozen&nbsp;&nbsp; little Easter eggs built in, from GPS coordinates&nbsp; of Area 51 to Braille and Morse code. Fingers&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:07] crossed nobody steals these Easter eggs. If you&nbsp; know, you know. It even has built-in magnets. Speaking of which, Dbrand's Totally Clear Zero&nbsp; Yellowing Ghost case also has magnets built&nbsp;&nbsp; into it. If Samsung isn't going to innovate,&nbsp; then Dbrand sure will. We even put magnets&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:24] on my favorite case, the Grip case, with my&nbsp; teardown skin installed. Magnets for days.&nbsp;&nbsp; at your local Best Buy if you ever, you know, go&nbsp; outside—because protection is always a good thing.
[08:38] Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.