Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Review: There's a Catch

[00:37] Nevermind. You might remember all my impressions of the phone were based on footage And those impressions were pretty positive.

[00:52] Just a few things that are new But I have been using this phone for about a week now, and the more I've used it and the more commentary I've seen about it online,

[01:06] trade-offs. is a trade-off. studies in that in a long time... So on paper,

[01:20] right? one to 120Hz, et cetera. the Privacy Display.

[01:33] You toggle it on or off whenever you want, and when it's on, preventing anyone from looking over your shoulder or snooping... a cheap 20,

[01:48] But... unlike that screen protector, this actually blocks all viewing angles, horizontal or vertical, off-axis. you can turn it on for just the pixels you want to

[02:03] so you can have it only block out your banking app and your texting app, incoming notifications, which is incredible. it's special that it's actually a new hardware feature,

[02:20] in the smartphone world these days. is a trade-off... of pixels on this new display.

[02:33] and narrow-angle pixels that seem to have some type of focusing lens on them, so you can only see them from straight on. all the pixels are on,

[02:47] it simply turns off the wide-angle pixels and it leaves only the narrow-angle pixels. But now that also means you just

[03:00] So your resolution is actually quite literally see it like there's blockier edges around text and smaller details I literally bought a microscope for this. So...

[03:15] this... is Privacy Display off like normal. You can see those pixels literally turning off. So yes, less resolution and also yes, peak brightness is a bit lower.

[03:30] pixels that are staying on to keep the perceived brightness about the same. you will actually see it get a little dimmer when you turn the feature on.

[03:43] is... slightly worse if you've added a narrow focusing lens to half of your pixels, slightly worse all the time

[03:57] because half of these pixels now have permanently poor viewing angles. It also appears to have a different coating on the display that's not quite And it also turns out it's still an 8-bit display simulating 10-bit color instead

[04:13] But I think that Samsung knows that... most people... Like even on this display, this is a 1440p screen, because they assume that most people would rather have the slightly

[04:29] longer battery life as a trade-off over like a perfect screen. the settings right out the box... and we will the slight resolution differences and viewing angle differences.

[04:43] using the 8-bit display again... this is the trade-off that they decided to make... that they probably believe will sell more phones.

[04:57] But like I said, if you're a pixel peeper like me, that you can get for your 1,300 bucks, But if that's your number one priority, there's other places you can look.

[05:14] Here's another trade-off: this new design. a little thinner, a little lighter and a little rounder at the corners to make it look like the rest

[05:26] comes with downsides. that means the part where the S Pen goes into the phone is So now the S Pen can only go back into this phone this one way,

[05:41] unlike last year where it was flat and so you didn't really have a camera plateau with rings on top of it, it's bigger, means this phone rocks this

[05:55] When I'm trying to type with no case... but, yeah, it's not nothing. honestly,

[06:07] But it does mean people will be able to make fun of you for copying the The new chip is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, which is a Snapdragon 8 Elite... Gen 5.

[06:22] slightly higher actually for the Samsung version, but still right around the yearly 20 to 30% CPU improvements expected. which... is around the AI generating...

[06:35] We'll get there. It's almost a formality at this point. Can it handle heavy multitasking and gaming?

[06:48] phone is doing just fine, and battery life is actually slightly better despite having the same are a bit more efficient.

[07:01] but... it's really good battery life, Now I do have to say though, and if you're a subscriber, you probably know exactly where I'm about to go with this.

[07:16] That seems like it would have been a no-brainer. Samsung, but... too?

[07:29] I know you've had battery scares in the past, too? but that does have more battery and magnets built in would have been pretty

[07:43] Mrwhosetheboss, Arun. life of S26 Ultra over the last gen, battery phones from last year. At this point,

[07:57] but it's also still kind of frustrating because it feels like the ceiling so much higher, so much more... Ultra. but I think that actually undersells how good they are.

[08:12] the 3X is about the same, So both of these cameras let more light in and get all the including slightly softer bokeh with close-up subjects.

[08:25] I feel like I'm always going to take the faster lens when I can get it. The minimum focus distance, though, on the main camera definitely got worse, but I did notice that downgrade from the main camera...

[08:40] The more noticeable camera changes, though, are actually the ones enabled by software, so the APV log codec was added. They also added this super aggressive stabilization feature called Horizon Lock,

[08:54] but it is one of the best executions we've seen of it. in to shoot ridiculously stable, is pretty sick! In general,

[09:08] video footage with the slightly wider aperture on the main camera looks good. All of the talking head footage on the latest AutoFocus episode with the so if you want to look at way more footage from this phone,

[09:21] The rest of what's new on an S26 Ultra... It's a word you could use. The word Samsung would probably like me to use is

[09:38] There's a ton of AI features crammed into this phone now, which is very welcome and very useful for screening unknown numbers, which does a good job of pretty naturally removing a good amount

[09:53] all the way to Photo Assist, which lets you edit photos to create entirely new scenes that and you can scroll through the Galaxy AI tab on this phone and see

[10:07] I think, honestly, take it or leave it. Like, You can go full slop mode and use all of it all the time I will say, I didn't get Now Nudge to work once,

[10:23] and I also tried many things with the AI text-based photo editor, it refused many of the things I tried to make it do. I'm just not convinced any of this is a reason to buy this phone,

[10:38] make its way to other Samsung devices across the lineup—older So then lastly, while I have your attention, I would just like to take this opportunity to say that the base S26

[10:54] Like, those phones feel like afterthoughts. The designs are basically unchanged—fine—but they've also had They got rid of millimeter wave.

[11:08] It's also an Exynos chip in a lot of regions outside of the US... and they got rid of the 128 gig version, which I think is good, So that just means the price of entry is higher...

[11:22] You can get a lot more phone for $900... Just wanted to put that out there while I had you. You probably have to vote with your wallets to get Samsung

[11:36] You know, this S26 Ultra is $1,300 starting, But I can at least say it's a really good phone with some clever new features. I just think the price is probably the most ultra thing about this phone.

[11:52] and it's got ultra-ish cameras and chip. But aside from that, this feels like an S26 But it doesn't have a super advanced new silicon-carbon battery or super-fast

[12:09] And it also doesn't have magnets, But they do have one one-of-one feature that is in no other smartphone...

[12:22] And that's the trade-off that they've bet on. Catch you guys in the next one... Peace!