Samsung S26 Ultra Hands on - The Disappearing Display!

TL;DR

The S26 Ultra's headline privacy display feature works but visibly degrades viewing angles even when switched off, making it a questionable trade-off.

Key Points

• 1.Privacy Display uses two pixel types — wide and narrow — to make the screen unreadable from the side, but activating it halves effective resolution and brightness, and even with it off, viewing angles are noticeably worse than the S25 Ultra with a blue tint at angles.
• 2.Design is thinner (8.2mm → 7.9mm), lighter, softer corners, and now matches the S26/S26+ aesthetic — but Samsung quietly dropped titanium back to aluminium despite heavily marketing titanium last year.
• 3.Cameras feature wider apertures on the 200MP main and telephoto lenses, improved low-light noise prediction software, a new horizontal lock stabilization mode, and noticeably better portrait/selfie processing — but not enough to top the smartphone camera rankings.
• 4.Battery remains stuck at 5,000mAh (same as six consecutive Ultra generations) despite Chinese flagships hitting 7,000mAh+, though charging jumps from 45W to 60W (0–75% in 30 minutes) and wireless charging improves to 25W.
• 5.Chip is the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy with ~20% more performance than last year, paired with 12–16GB RAM, and the display gains a proper 10-bit panel for wider color range.
• 6.AI software highlights include auto-organized screenshots, a new Finder search button, Bixby integrated with Perplexity AI, audio erasing on any video, and improved generative photo editing — but the "Nudge" contextual suggestion feature was inconsistent and unreliable during testing.