Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Launches With Privacy Display and AI Overload at $1,299
Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S26 lineup — the Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra. Pre-orders are open now, with devices shipping on March 11. The Ultra starts at $1,299.99, and Samsung is betting big on two things: a novel Privacy Display and an avalanche of AI features.
The Privacy Display
The standout hardware feature on the Galaxy S26 Ultra is its built-in Privacy Display. Using pixel-level light control, the technology makes it significantly harder for someone sitting next to you to see what's on your screen. Looking at the phone head-on, everything appears normal. But from a side angle, the display becomes unreadable.
Samsung lets you configure Privacy Display to activate only for specific apps or situations — like entering a PIN or browsing banking apps. There are partial and maximum privacy options.
Camera: 200MP and Dual Telephoto
The S26 Ultra packs Samsung's best camera lineup yet: a 200-megapixel wide lens, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide lens, and two telephoto lenses — a 10MP with 3x optical zoom and a 50MP with 5x optical zoom (plus 10x "optical quality" zoom). There's also an improved Nightography feature for clearer video in low-light conditions.
The AI Everything Approach
Samsung has packed the S26 with AI features at every level:
Photo Assist lets you describe changes to a photo in natural language — remove objects, restore missing elements, change a scene from day to night, or even change someone's outfit. Creative Studio generates AI visuals like stickers, wallpapers, and invitations from sketches, photos, or text prompts.
Now Nudge proactively suggests actions to reduce distractions. Now Brief delivers personalized daily AI briefings based on your context. Call Screening intercepts unknown callers, asks why they're calling, and summarizes it for you.
There are also Privacy Alerts (notifying when apps try to access sensitive data), Private Album (hide photos without a separate folder), and background AI processing that lets agents complete multi-step tasks while you do something else.
Perhaps most notably, Samsung now lets users choose Gemini or Perplexity as alternatives to Bixby, accessible via button press or voice command.
Under the Hood
All three models run on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which Samsung says delivers a 19% faster CPU, 24% faster GPU, and 39% improvement in neural processing compared to the previous generation. Most models come with 12GB RAM, though the 1TB Ultra gets 16GB.
Charging has improved: 75% in 30 minutes via wired charging, and up to 25W wireless charging is supported.
Pricing and Availability
The Galaxy S26 starts at $899.99, the S26+ at $1,099.99, and the S26 Ultra at $1,299.99. Pre-orders are available now, with general availability on March 11. Samsung also announced the Galaxy Buds4 and Buds4 Pro alongside the phones.
Bottom Line
The Galaxy S26 Ultra's Privacy Display is a genuinely innovative hardware feature that solves a real problem. But the sheer volume of AI features feels like Samsung throwing everything at the wall. Photo Assist and Call Screening are practical. "Change someone's outfit in a photo" and AI-generated stickers feel like features designed for press releases rather than daily use. At $1,299, Samsung is asking a lot — and the question is whether the AI overload justifies the premium or just adds complexity most users will never touch.