Samsung’s next Galaxy Watch Ultra could bring the battery upgrade many users have been waiting for. The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is expected to launch in the coming weeks, and a new report suggests it may arrive with a much larger battery than the 2024 and 2025 models.

According to SamMobile, the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 will use a battery with a rated capacity of 784mAh. Samsung could market this as an 800mAh typical capacity, which would make it around 35% larger than the 590mAh battery used in the current Galaxy Watch Ultra models.

A bigger battery could push the Ultra closer to three days

Samsung currently claims up to two days of battery life on the Galaxy Watch Ultra when users rely on features such as GPS training mode. If the reported battery upgrade is accurate, the Watch Ultra 2 could get much closer to three days of regular use, depending on display settings, workout tracking, cellular use, and health monitoring.

The battery may not be the only efficiency upgrade. The smartwatch is also rumored to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite chip instead of Samsung’s Exynos W1000, which could help stretch runtime further.

5G support could complicate the battery gains

Another reported change is 5G support. Previous leaks have suggested that Samsung is preparing a 5G version of the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, though availability may initially be limited to markets such as the US and South Korea.

That upgrade could make the watch more capable away from a phone, but it may also affect battery life. Until Samsung announces the device, it is unclear how much of the larger battery will be used to offset 5G power demands. Samsung is also likely to base the Watch Ultra 2’s software on Wear OS 7, which Google recently unveiled at I/O 2026.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is expected to debut alongside Samsung’s next foldables, which are rumored to arrive in July 2026. So, it looks like we may not have to wait long to find out whether Samsung’s next Ultra watch really delivers the battery jump suggested by the latest reports.

Quick review

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is the most complete Android phone I’ve used this year. It doesn’t get there with a single headline feature, though. Instead, it wins the crown by being good at almost everything and then topping it off with its own exclusive set of perks. At $1,300, it’s also undeniably expensive. After four months of using it as my only phone, I don’t think anything else in the Android segment comes close to its breadth. Samsung dropped the titanium frame this time for a lighter, more colorful Armor Aluminum one, and it finally rounded off the corners that used to bite into my palm.

The headline addition is the Privacy Display, baked into the hardware rather than slapped on as a film. It hides the screen from whoever’s sitting next to you. I was skeptical until I used it and got some surprised looks from the people around me. Underneath the glass-and-metal kit sits the customized Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 silicon, which finally pulls level with Apple’s silicon inside iPhones. Whether it’s heavy multitasking, on-device AI through Gemini, or camera capture, all of it ran without a stutter in my time with the phone.

It’s not perfect, though. The battery is still 5,000 mAh, the same as the last few Ultras, and the screen-on time reflects that. It’s respectable, but nothing special. The faster 60W wired charging takes some of the sting out, at least. The cameras get wider apertures and much better low-light results. Futhermore, the Horizon Lock video mode genuinely impressed me, but I still hit the odd exposure wobble and some shutter lag. The bottom line is that the Galaxy S26 Ultra is an unapologetic powerhouse. It won’t drag S25 Ultra owners into an upgrade charm, but for just about everyone else, it’s a masterclass.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra specs: What’s inside this sleek flagship?

Processor	Octa-Core (4.74 GHz, 3.6 GHz)
Display	17.49 cm Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 3120 x 1440 (Quad HD+), 16M Colour Depth, 120 Hz Max Refresh Rate
S Pen Support	Yes
Rear Camera	200.0 MP + 50.0 MP + 50.0 MP + 10.0 MP (F1.4, F2.9, F1.9, F2.4), Auto Focus, OIS
Camera Zoom	Optical Zoom 3x and 5x, Optical quality Zoom 2x and 10x, Digital Zoom up to 100x
Front Camera	12.0 MP (F2.2), Auto Focus
Video Recording	UHD 8K (7680 x 4320) @ 30fps
Memory / Storage	12 GB RAM / 256 GB Storage (224.1 GB Available)
Network	Dual-SIM (Nano-SIM, eSIM), 2G, 3G, 4G LTE, 5G Sub6
Connectivity	USB Type-C (3.2 Gen 1), Wi-Fi 7 (802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be), Bluetooth v6.0, NFC, UWB, GPS
OS	Android
Sensors	Accelerometer, Barometer, Fingerprint, Gyro, Geomagnetic, Hall, Light, Proximity
Physical Dimensions	163.6 x 78.1 x 7.9 mm
Weight	214 g
Battery	5000 mAh (Non-removable), Up to 31 hours video playback time
Audio & Video	Stereo Support, Video Playback Resolution up to UHD 8K (7680 x 4320) @ 60fps
Software Support	Security Updates valid until 28 February 2033

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra design and build: A deceptively sleek behemoth

Every smartphone label is chasing titanium these days, so Samsung going back to aluminum reads like a step backward on paper. It isn’t. After living with the Armor Aluminum 2 frame, I’m convinced the swap was the right call. For one, aluminum takes anodization far better than the PVD coating titanium needs, which is why the colors here pop the way they do.

You get Cobalt Violet (the one I tested, and the one Samsung wants you to buy as the signature color this year), Sky Blue, White, Black, and two Samsung-exclusive shades, Silver Shadow and Pink Gold. The other reason is heat. Aluminum dissipates it a lot quicker than titanium. I learned that lesson the hard way with the iPhone 16 Pro.

Paired with the vapor chamber, the aluminum chassis on the Samsung flagship kept the phone from getting toasty under stress, but more on that later. I noticed it most during a marathon evening of editing a trip video on the phone, the kind of workflow that usually leaves a metal phone warm enough to be unpleasant. This one stayed merely warm.

The ergonomics get better. Phew!

Samsung finally fixed my biggest pet peeve about its top-end phones. Those sharp, palm-digging corners are finally gone. The rounded edges on the S26 Ultra are subtle, but it changes how the phone feels in the hand entirely. It feels thinner and easier to manage one-handed, and after a week, I stopped reaching instinctively for a case, which I never did with the last Ultra.

The camera array still juts out about half a centimeter, though, so the phone rocks around on a desk if you tap at it lying flat without a case. That’s the one ergonomic compromise that hasn’t budged in years, and I doubt it’s going to change in the near future due to the ever-upgrading imaging hardware.

Durability and ingress protection

Up front, you’ll find Corning’s Gorilla Armor 2 layer, which mixes in ceramic for better drop resistance and glare reduction. The back is Gorilla Glass Victus 2. I didn’t deliberately drop the phone, because it isn’t mine to destroy, but it picked up exactly zero micro-scratches over a few months of being tossed into bags alongside keys and a charging brick, which is more than I can say for plenty of phones I’ve tested.

One aspect worth flagging is the durability. The Galaxy S26 Ultra holds its IP68 rating, which means it’s good for accidental dips in 1.5m of water for 30 minutes. It’s not the best out there, by the way. A handful of Chinese rivals are already shipping IP69 and IP69K ratings for high-pressure water resistance, which means they can shrug off hot, pressurized jets, not just a dunk in a sink.

The OnePlus 15 is one of those phones, and it pulls off the durability stunt without compromising the looks. Samsung is being conservative. For most people, IP68 is plenty, and the build still feels rock solid in the hand, but it’s a spec sheet line where Samsung is no longer leading the pack.

The S Pen experience

The S Pen lives in the bottom-left corner inside its own silo. It’s a touch thinner this year, with a curved end that sits flush against the new frame. Functionally, however, it hasn’t changed much since Samsung pulled back the Bluetooth tricks. There’s no more air-gesture remote-shutter party trick to enjoy, and it’s worth mourning.

I rarely used it, so I won’t pretend that it’s a huge miss for me. It’s still the best stylus on any phone by a far margin. The latency is effectively zero, and that held up whether I was scribbling notes in a meeting, sketching a rough idea, or nudging a slider in the photo editor where the fine control genuinely matters.

I love the fact that it can kick into action right from the lock screen, offering you a natural canvas for jotting down notes without having to go through the whole fingerprint scan or password input hassle.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra display: Two steps forward, one step back

The screen on the Galaxy S26 Ultra is a gorgeous 6.9-inch flat Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X panel with QHD+ (3120 x 1440 pixels at 500 ppi) resolution and a refresh rate that ramps from 1Hz all the way to 120Hz. Peak HDR brightness hits 2,600 nits, so I never once squinted at it outdoors.

Plus, there’s an anti-reflective Gorilla Armor 2 coating on top. I spent an afternoon shooting and reviewing photos under a harsh midday sun. Ordinarily, that kind of light turns most smartphone screens into mirrors, especially with the dark mode UI. The Galaxy S26 Ultra did a much better job and stayed legible throughout the exercise.

Let’s talk about that Privacy Display

This is the real story of the S26 Ultra. Forget the cheap stick-on privacy films that dilute the image clarity. Samsung built this in at the sub-pixel level, interlacing normal wide-viewing OLED pixels with narrow-beam pixel arrays. The way it works is straightforward in practice, even if the engineering is clever.

As you switch it on, the wide pixels shut off, so anyone peering in from more than 45 degrees off-axis sees a murky near-black panel, while you, looking at it straight, see everything as normal. There are a bunch of granular controls, too. You can leave it on all the time, or pin it to specific triggers, so it kicks in automatically for banking apps, WhatsApp, or just incoming notification pop-ups and nothing else.

In day-to-day use, it was the feature I didn’t know I wanted. On a crowded metro train, I caught myself replying to messages I’d normally have left until I got home, because I was no longer worried about the person packed against my shoulder peeking at them. It’s the rare phone feature that actually changed my behavior rather than just sitting in a settings menu.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though

Privacy Display is a meaningful trick, but Samsung’s choices come with three caveats that I kept noticing. The first is viewing angles. Even with privacy mode off, that interlaced pixel structure leaves the Ultra with slightly narrower natural viewing angles than the cheaper S26 and S26+. You’ll only really see it if you hand the phone to someone and you’re both trying to watch from the side.

The second is contrast. Once you set Privacy Display to Maximum Privacy mode, the brightness output and color contrast take a visible hit. Those signature inky AMOLED blacks start looking a little gray, as a result. It’s a fair loss for the privacy and display convenience, but it is still a trade-off you must learn to live with.

And finally, despite some confusing early claims, this is an 8-bit display leaning on FRC to fake 10-bit color output. Most people will never catch any banding in normal use, and I had to go looking in test gradients to spot it. But on a $1,300 phone in 2026, an 8-bit panel is going to bother the purists, and they’re not wrong to expect more at this price. There’s also no high-frequency PWM dimming, so if you’re sensitive to OLED flicker, low brightness might tire your eyes over a long evening of reading in the dark.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra camera: Legacy preserved with extra oomph

Alright, let’s discuss the soul of the Galaxy S26 Ultra. The quad-camera layout looks familiar, but the aperture and processing changes here add up to real gains, especially after dark. This is also the section where I spent the most time, because cameras are where flagship phones either justify their price or quietly don’t, and Samsung’s Galaxy S Ultra has always marketed itself as the phone you leave the real camera at home for.

Main (Wide)	200 MP	f/1.4 (up from f/1.7)	1/1.3″	0.6µm, multi-directional PDAF, OIS
Ultrawide	50 MP	f/1.9	1/2.5″	120˚ FOV, dual pixel PDAF
Telephoto 1 (3x)	10 MP	f/2.4	1/3.94″	67mm equivalent, OIS
Telephoto 2 (5x)	50 MP	f/2.9 (up from f/3.4)	1/2.52″	111mm equivalent, ALoP design, OIS
Front (Selfie)	12 MP	f/2.2	1/3.2″	Wider 23mm FOV, dual pixel PDAF

Let’s start where it counts, because the 200MP main sensor is doing the heavy lifting on this phone, and Samsung has clearly poured its energy into it. The headline change is the jump to an f/1.4 aperture, up from f/1.7 on the S25 Ultra, and that’s not a marketing number you should glide past. A wider aperture pulls in more light, which matters enormously the moment the sun goes down.

I’ll start with the low-light situation. In the image below, you can see what the camera viewfinder shows your eyes, and what the image sensors actually capture in a dark room:

In good daylight, honestly, the gap between this and last year’s Ultra is hard to see, because there’s plenty of light to go around and Samsung’s processing was already excellent. The 200MP sensor pixel-bins down to a default 12MP shot that’s clean, detailed, and well-saturated. If you switch to the full 200MP mode for a static, well-lit scene, the amount of detail you can crop into is genuinely absurd.

The only trade-off is that the 12MP pixel-binned shots turn out a tad sharper, while the full 200MP clicks are a bit noisy and lose out on finer surface details. Otherwise, with steady hands, the 50MP and 200MP modes can deliver some terrific results. I shot a building facade across a plaza and could pull a legible street sign out of a corner of the frame that I couldn’t even read with my own eyes from where I stood.

Where the f/1.4 lens earns its keep is in the in-between hours. Indoor restaurant lighting, an overcast street at dusk, or a living room lit by a couple of lamps, that’s the territory where last year’s phones started smearing detail and lifting noise, and it’s where the Galaxy S26 Ultra shines. Shadow detail that used to dissolve into mush stays intact, and the phone doesn’t lean as hard on its noise reduction.

Night capture

Samsung loves the word “Nightography,” and I went in ready to roll my eyes at it. I’ll give credit where it’s due, though, because the f/1.4 main lens combined with the new processing produced the cleanest phone night shots I’ve taken on a phone in years. And yeah, it does a noticeably better job than the iPhone 17 Pro, both in terms of color realism and surface details.

City skylines came out cleaner, with the bright points of distant windows staying crisp instead of blooming into colored halos. I took the phone out to shoot a stretch of road lit only by sodium streetlamps, the kind of orange-cast scene that throws off the white balance. The Galaxy S26 Ultra handled it more accurately than I expected, keeping the tarmac a believable gray rather than dunking the whole frame in a warm coat.

On a reasonably dark night outside the city, the dedicated astro mode stacked a long exposure and pulled out a genuinely respectable field of stars, with far less of the smeary, watercolor-sky effect these modes used to produce. It’s not replacing a tripod-mounted mirrorless camera and a fast prime anytime soon, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise, but as a phone you happen to have in your pocket when the sky is clear, it punches well above its weight class.

Zoom, telephoto, and the 5x macro problem

The two telephoto lenses are where the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s ambition really shows. The 3x lens is the one I reached for most without thinking, because it sits at the natural portrait length, and it renders faces with flattering compression and minimal distortion. The 5x lens is the showpiece, and Samsung pushed its aperture wider this time around, which again pays off after dark.

The phone will push out to 100x Space Zoom, and as always, that mode is a party trick more than a useful tool, fine for reading a far-off sign but a mushy, AI-smoothed mess for anything you’d actually want to keep. I tried my best with long-range clicks of pets and nature, and the surface texture turned out pretty hazy and just messed up.

There is one real catch with the 5x lens, and it’s worth understanding before you buy. To slim the telephoto module down, Samsung went with an ALoP design on the bigger zoom camera. The upside is that you get a gorgeous bokeh effect, the kind of soft background separation that makes portraits truly shine. The downside is that at this range, the phone hunts for focus far more than I’d like.

If you like shooting tight detail shots, a flower, a watch face, a plate of food, you’ll find the 5x backing away from you, and you’ll end up on the main sensor’s macro mode instead. It’s a quirk, not a dealbreaker, but it vexed me in the early days until I adjusted my instincts. Also, the color chemistry of the macro shots is slightly different, leaning towards a warmer color cast, so that’s worth keeping in mind.

The highs, lows, and the stuff that irked me

The front camera lands a wider frame on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which doesn’t sound like much until you’re squeezing three friends into a frame. Without a selfie stick, that extra bit of width is the difference between everyone fitting and someone losing half their head. Details are good, skin tones are handled well, and the wider field makes it a better travel companion for group shots in front of something you actually want in the background.

On color accuracy, Samsung has finally reined in its old habit of cranking up the saturation way beyond realism. For years, Samsung’s phones would hand you skies that were a little too blue and grass that looked a tad too green. It was flattering at a glance but not realistic. This year, skin tones and white balance stayed accurate across all kinds of lighting in my shots. It’s a more grown-up and mature look, and I prefer it.

Now, on to the less flattering parts. In tricky high-contrast scenes, exposure sometimes drifted between back-to-back shots, so I’d fire off three frames of the same subject and find one noticeably brighter than the others for no obvious reason. More frustrating is the low-light shutter lag. Below a certain threshold, there’s a real 0.5 to 1.5 second capture delay, and it cost me a couple of shots of a moving subject I’d genuinely have liked to keep.

The feature I keep showing people, though, is Super Steady Horizon Lock. It leans on the gyroscope and EIS, letting you spin the phone a full 360 degrees while recording, and the horizon just stays put. It’s uncanny. I moved the phone around like a waving soccer fan in my kitchen to test its limits, and the footage came back looking like it was shot on a gimbal. It went meaningfully further than Apple’s Action Mode in my side-by-side comparison. For anyone shooting handheld action, a kid’s football match, a bike ride, or a concert, it’s the kind of perk that turns unusable footage into something you’d actually post.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra performance: Fast and hot

The Galaxy S26 Ultra draws power from the customized Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy silicon. It’s based on the 3nm process, tagging alongside fast UFS 4.0 storage and either 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM to go with it. There’s a lot of performance headroom here, and in normal use I never came close to running out of it.

Apps snap open, the camera is ready the instant I raise the phone, and I never once watched it stutter while switching between a dozen open apps. Android chips have trailed Apple on raw core performance for years, and the gap was the stick Apple fans loved to beat Android with. The Oryon V3 cores in the Elite Gen 5 close that gap, and it reflects in the Geekbench benchmark scores.

There’s a bigger vapor chamber in here this time, and the phone never got uncomfortably hot while I used it. Games such as Zenless Zone Zero and Diablo Immortal worked without any stutters. The trade-off is how it gets to the performance summit. As I pushed it hard with titles like Genshin Impact, the throttling became visible with lowered FPS output, all done to keep the surface cool.

You can see it in the numbers. The phone posts a chart-topping tally on the demanding 3DMark tests, and then drops aggressively down to nearly half its peak performance after a sustained 20-minute run. Even throttled, that ties the iPhone’s sustained score and leaves the Pixel 10 Pro XL far behind.

Running the CPU throttle test, the phone fared even worse in terms of sustained performance drop. I have seen devices like the Red Magic 11 Pro fare much better. In practice, that means a long gaming session gets a little less smooth after the first twenty minutes, but never to the point where it becomes annoying or drops too many frames to ruin the experience.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra software: Loaded with AI

The Galaxy S26 Ultra ships running Android 16 with One UI 8.5 layer on top. Notably, Samsung is matching Google’s seven years of major OS and security updates promises, which carry the phone through to 2033. That’s a long tail of support, and it’s a huge reassurance if you’re a person who sticks with their phone until it falls apart.

Before we dig into the AI side of the debate, One UI itself isn’t bad. Far from it. DeX is still one of the best implementations of a desktop-like work environment bundled with an Android phone. Moreover, Good Lock offers the deepest level of customization on a smartphone without having to flash a ROM or install sketchy apps. The design is familiar, but after seeing the same familiar UI for years, it could use some jazzing up at this point in time.

The AI ecosystem

There are a lot of AI engines stacked on top of each other here. It can feel like too much at first, and there’s a real argument that Samsung has thrown everything at the wall to see what sticks. Once you figure out where everything lives, though, you can get some genuine utility out of it. The most interesting piece is agentic AI through Gemini. It doesn’t just answer you. Instead, it can go act inside third-party apps, ordering your usual off DoorDash or booking an airport Uber.

It’s still a beta experience, and it shows. It’s slow, and you often have to sit and watch it tap through the app before it hands you a final confirm button, which rather defeats the point of automation. Still, you can see where this is all going, and it’s the first time I’ve used a phone feature that felt like a preview of the next few years rather than a gimmick of this one.

Bixby, meanwhile, isn’t just an alarm-setter anymore. Samsung wired in Perplexity, so it can field genuinely complex real-time questions and cite where the answers came from, which makes it actually trustworthy in a way Bixby never has been.

The Photo Assist and Creative Studio tools let you tweak a photo, recolor a shirt, or sketch something rough with the S Pen and have the AI turn it into a watercolor, a 3D render, or an oil painting. They’re fun, occasionally useful, and exactly the sort of thing you’ll show someone once and then forget about. But they also tend to misfire, as you can see in the sample images below.

The misfires

Samsung is pushing the Galaxy S26 Ultra as an AI-native phone, and as such, it has crammed it into nearly every corner of the software experience, but not all of it works. Now Brief stacks weather, calendar, and news into a lock-screen widget, but I never got more out of it than the widgets we’ve already had for a decade.

Now Nudge is supposed to read what’s on your screen and react, spotting a text about dinner and offering a Maps link, among other such helpful cues. In my testing, it almost never fired when I actually wanted it, and when it did, the suggestion was usually something I’d already thought of.

There’s one smart privacy touch worth a mention, and that’s local AI processing. If you don’t want any of your personal data to go to the cloud, you can enable it to handle AI tasks on-device. You lose some of the heavier generative features, of course, but your data stays put and I appreciate that Samsung made it prominently accessible rather than burying the choice.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra battery life and charging: Stagnant, but reliable

Capacity and screen-on time

If there’s one soft spot on the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s stacked specs sheet, it’s the battery. Samsung has maximized the peak capacity at 5,000 mAh for yet another year. Rivals are out there are shipping silicon-carbon cells up to 8,000 mAh as the mainstream now, while Samsung sits tight. I understand the caution, but a competitor managing 40% more capacity in a similar footprint makes the decision a tad harder to defend.

The 3nm chip and LTPO panel are efficient enough that battery life doesn’t tank midway through a day. It’s just not the class leader anymore. On a heavy day of 5G, gaming, and GPS usage, I averaged 5 to 6 hours of screen-on time, which meant charging every night without fail. On more moderate days, I landed closer to eight hours of screen-on time in standard testing, which is solid. The number that stings is the video streaming rundown. Simply put, if endurance is your single most important spec, the Ultra is no longer the phone to beat.

Charging speeds and MagSafe omissions

To make up for a stagnant battery capacity situation, charging got a lot quicker, and this is where Samsung genuinely improved things. Wired charging now runs at 60W, up from 45W. In practice, I hit 75% in about half an hour, and a full charge took around 54 minutes. That’s quick enough that a ten-minute top-up before heading out actually buys you meaningful hours. Wireless charging is bumped to 25W on the Qi 2.2 standard, which is fairly standard.

But here’s the catch, and it’s a baffling one. Even though it supports Qi2 speeds, Samsung didn’t put the magnetic ring in the back of the phone. So if you want that satisfying magnetic snap, the MagSafe or Pixel Snap experience where the charger or accessory just clicks into place, you have to go buy a specific magnet-equipped case. On a $1,300 phone, that’s just annoying, and it’s the kind of small omission that nags at you every time you fumble a wireless charger and struggle with aligning the charging coil.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra?

The Galaxy S26 Ultra doesn’t reinvent anything. What it does is take the established Ultra formula and tighten every screw. An improved Armor Aluminum frame, a faster Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 finally drawing level with Apple, and that genuinely clever Privacy Display push the device forward in ways that matter.

Sure, the 5,000 mAh battery feels dated in 2026, the AI tricks are still a bit meh, and skipping native magnetic charging is baffling. But after spending months with the phone, none of that outweighed how much it simply does. It has the best stylus on any phone, a quad-camera system that’s now pretty strong in low light, and a beautiful, glare-resistant display. It’s still the phone to beat for power users. If you want one device that does everything, this is the one to get.

Why not try

If $1,300 stings, or the Ultra’s specific trade-offs don’t line up with how you live, here are three other options you can consider:

1. Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max — The best for ecosystem loyalists and battery life warriors. It’s the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s natural rival at roughly the same price. On the downside, it skips the stylus, misses out on true 10x zoom. To its credit, it crushes the Samsung phone on battery mileage, and it’s still the safest bet for point-and-shoot video. Moroever, nothing touches it if you already own a Mac, iPad, or Apple Watch.
2. Google Pixel 10 Pro XL — An obvious pick for clean software and effortless photography. It’s also cheaper, and it runs Google’s pure, bloat-free Android experience. The Tensor G5 won’t quite keep up in terms of raw performance, but the Pixel still pulls ahead on plain old still photography. It’s also got built-in magnetic charging via Pixel Snap, which is pretty convenient.
3. Samsung Galaxy S26+ — Best for the majority who want flagship muscle for less. If the S Pen, the 200MP camera, the 5x zoom, and the Privacy Display all leave you cold, the S26+ is a smart buy. From $1,100 you get the same fast Snapdragon, the same seven-year update promise, and a near-identical design in a lighter body, with $200 still in your pocket, a seven-year update promise, and a near-identical design in a lighter body, with $200 still in your pocket.

How we tested

I got my hands on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra in its launch week, and over the course of the past four months, I have used it as my primary phone. I have traveled with it extensively, keeping it hooked to a 5G network and even using it as an on-the-go hotspot device for an extended spell.

As far as testing goes, the performance tests were conducted on two separate occasions, with vastly different ambient weather to get a clear picture of how it handles heat build-up and dissipation. Cameras were tested across four cities in different lighting conditions throughout the day.

On the software side, the phone was running One UI 8.5 stable build. At the time of writing this review, there were 140 apps running on the phone, which included third-party applications as well as those that came pre-installed on the phone. All testing was done with the device running in its native performance state.

Apple’s rumored MacBook Ultra is shaping up to be one of the most significant Mac redesigns in years, and a fresh industry report suggests it could land sooner than anyone expected. Research firm Omdia has released a new study on OLED adoption in laptops, and buried inside it are some very specific details about Apple‘s next MacBook.

What screen sizes will the MacBook Ultra come in?

According to the report, Samsung Display will begin supplying OLED panels for Apple’s new MacBook series as early as July 2026, with the devices expected to launch in Q3 2026. That almost certainly means a September debut, likely alongside the iPhone 18 series and the foldable iPhone Ultra.

The Omdia report points to two screen sizes for the MacBook Ultra: 14.3 inches and 16.3 inches. The current MacBook Pro comes in 14.2-inch and 16.2-inch configurations, so the slight size bump likely comes from slimmer bezels and a redesigned chassis.

What makes the OLED display so different?

Apple is not using the same OLED technology found in most laptops or even its own iPhone displays. According to Omdia’s Jerry Kang, the MacBook Ultra will use a hybrid OLED architecture based on oxide TFT and RGB tandem OLED technology.

This combination has never been used in a laptop before, but it’s similar to the display technology already found in the iPad Pro. It is specifically designed to consume less power than both LTPO and single-layer RGB OLEDs. That matters because the MacBook Ultra is also rumored to be significantly thinner than the current MacBook Pro.

Apple would need a major efficiency jump to maintain the battery life its laptops are known for. This new display tech is reportedly how it plans to pull that off. The MacBook Ultra is also expected to be a new tier in Apple’s lineup, sitting above the current MacBook Pro rather than replacing it.

By the end of 2026, Apple could have its MacBook lineup running from the entry-level Neo all the way up to the Ultra, covering more ground than ever before.

For years, smartphone brands have promised “DSLR-like” photography. Most improved image processing, added bigger sensors, or stacked more cameras onto the back. But the Vivo X300 Ultra takes a very different approach – it does not just want to mimic a camera, it wants to behave like one.

From external telephoto lenses and physical camera controls to filter support and tripod mounting, Vivo’s latest Ultra flagship feels closer to a modular photography system than a traditional smartphone. The company is no longer simply chasing better smartphone photos; it is targeting creators who would normally carry a mirrorless camera in their bag.

Welcome, the big daddy of smartphone photography.

One of the biggest talking points is Vivo’s redesigned Photography Kit. Unlike brands that rely on adding multiple telephoto cameras, Vivo extends the X300 Ultra’s existing 85mm telephoto system using external teleconverter lenses. This year, users can choose between a 200mm lens and a larger 400mm attachment designed for extreme long-range photography.

These are teleconverters rather than traditional camera lenses, meaning they magnify the phone’s existing telephoto camera instead of containing their own focusing systems or apertures. That makes them smaller, lighter, and easier to carry while still improving zoom reach significantly.

The Photography Kit also includes a dedicated protective case with a bayonet-style mounting system around the camera module. This allows users to attach filters, telephoto adapters, and other accessories directly to the phone. Vivo even supports ND, UV, and circular polarizer filters, giving creators more flexibility while shooting outdoors.

For tripod users, the telephoto lenses include Arca-Swiss compatible tripod collars, making the setup more usable for stable long-range photography. The updated camera grip further adds to the experience with a dedicated video recording button, zoom lever, shutter key, programmable function button, and scroll wheel.

Camera specs are good, camera quality is even better.

The camera hardware itself is equally ambitious. Vivo continues using a 35mm equivalent focal length for the primary camera, offering a tighter and more natural perspective compared to the ultra-wide look of most flagship smartphones. This year, the phone upgrades to Sony’s 200MP Lytia 901 sensor in a large 1/1.12-inch format, replacing the previous generation’s 50MP setup.

The telephoto system remains one of the device’s biggest strengths. Vivo sticks to a single 85mm equivalent zoom camera with an f/2.7 aperture, backed by a massive 200MP 1/1.4-inch Samsung HP0 sensor. Meanwhile, the ultra-wide camera continues using a large 1/1.28-inch sensor paired with a 14mm lens, making it one of the most capable ultra-wide systems on a smartphone today.

On the front, the X300 Ultra features a 50MP selfie camera with autofocus support and a 24mm equivalent lens for sharper selfies and video calls.

However, we are now more interested in three main categories: portrait, long-range shots, and video stability. Before we begin, we would like to reiterate that all testing was done at the default 12.5MP camera resolution, with additional photos taken at 50MP as well.

Starting, the portrait mode works as advertised. But we are not holding our breath. In our usage, we found the camera took better portrait shots in Photo mode instead of the actual Portrait mode. The actual mode made the photos sometimes unrealistically soft on the edges or bokeh-ed. However, for proper depth and bokeh shots, we were able to get decent portraits with the standard 35mm lens. Details are rich, and colours are lively. Vivo has made sure to put in one of the best displays for showing the correct colour instead of just enriching the photo with warmer shades.

We talked about the choice of resolution, which typically starts from 25MP, 50MP, and then straight to 200MP. We did click a couple of photos at 200MP and 50MP, but since striking that quality vs file size balance was also important, we recommend sticking around at the default limit of 12.5MP. Overall, the dynamic range was superb, and the white balance was on point for all photos we took – portrait or no portrait. Mind you, this was just at 35mm.

Next up is 50mm, where the quality of photos does not falter, but instead becomes slightly more detailed. Photo quality remains top-notch. Portrait shots look great, although we still find the edges more aggressively softened in Portrait mode and look more natural in standard Photo mode. Why, you ask? That’s a very good question.

Have we entered danger zoom levels yet?

Then comes the 70mm, which only arrives in Photo mode, while in the Portrait mode, it jumps straight to 85mm. For the base 12.5MP shots at their default 35mm focal length, 70mm serves as a 2x shot, which again shows off excellent quality pictures. Colours still pop, white still balances, and edges still sharp.

The 85mm shots look decent enough, but gets a tighter framing structure and are good for telephoto portraits. The skin tones look great, while the clarity of details on the face looks excellent. Again, portrait mode means sharpness takes a hit in parts of the image.

Then there is the 135mm in Portrait mode, but the overall quality dips slightly, with photos ending up with a processed look while details are still decent enough. Sharpness is not the greatest forte at this focal length, and we daresay, we would actually recommend switching to photo mode with a higher zoom level – rather than using the 135mm on the Portrait mode.

Now that we have talked about the Portrait prowess of the X300 Ultra, we now enter the telephoto waters with the 170mmine photo mode. With the 12.5MP resolution, the images look good, with top-grade colours and detail.

Then we come to the longest zoom level at 230mm – the photos still look decent enough, but you can still catch the processing on images here and there. Nevertheless, the images are still on the better end, even though they look a bit processed at times.

Video quality is also Ultra on the X300 Ultra.

The Vivo X300 Ultra is not just a photography-focused phone – Vivo clearly wants it to be treated like a serious video camera too. And on paper, the specs are absurd enough to make some mirrorless cameras slightly uncomfortable.

All three rear cameras can shoot up to 4K at 120fps and even 8K at 30fps, while the selfie camera tops out at a still-more-than-enough 4K60. Vivo also caters to creators who obsess over frame rates like filmmakers discussing coffee beans. Hidden inside the settings are PAL-friendly 25fps and 100fps modes, while Pro Video unlocks 24fps and 50fps options for those who want their footage to scream “cinematic” before color grading even begins.

The phone defaults to the efficient H.265 codec, though users can switch to H.264 if they enjoy larger file sizes and compatibility with ancient editing workflows. More interestingly, Samsung’s professional-grade APV codec is supported for Log recording, which immediately tells you that Vivo expects at least some users to throw this footage into DaVinci Resolve instead of Instagram Stories.

Log capture works across all cameras and nearly every resolution and frame rate combination, except 8K. Vivo also includes LUT support, with a built-in LUT preloaded and the option to import custom ones. Dolby Vision recording is similarly available almost everywhere, only disappearing when shooting in 8K.

The regular video mode is loaded with creator tools, including filters, styles, beautification settings, and even a teleprompter feature for aspiring smartphone news anchors. Switch to Pro Video mod,e and things get serious fast, with waveform monitoring, exposure controls, audio level monitoring, and manual focus tools.

Stabilization is where the X300 Ultra genuinely impresses. Electronic stabilization is permanently active in standard shooting modes, while Ultra Stabilization and Horizon Leveling modes are available for more demanding footage. Walking shots from both the 14mm ultrawide and 35mm main camera remain impressively stable with almost no visible shake, jello effect, or awkward movement artifacts.

Video quality overall is excellent, especially in terms of dynamic range, contrast, and color reproduction. Vivo’s color tuning keeps footage vibrant without crossing into oversaturated “vacation mode.” Sharpness, however, is slightly softer than expected, particularly on the ultrawide camera. The 85mm telephoto performs better, though zooming to 170mm and 230mm introduces a hazier look. Still, considering the phone is digitally pushing far beyond its native focal length, the results remain surprisingly usable.

Apple’s long-rumored foldable iPhone may have just taken another step closer to reality – or at least another step closer to the internet’s imagination. A newly leaked replica model, believed to represent Apple’s upcoming “iPhone Ultra” foldable device, is now circulating online, revealing what could be one of the company’s boldest design shifts in years.

According to a report from Notebookcheck, the replica showcases a foldable phone with curved edges, a slim profile, and a surprisingly familiar design language that many users are already comparing to existing Android foldables.

If the leak turns out to be accurate, Apple’s first foldable iPhone may not look radically different from competitors after all.

Apple’s foldable iPhone may prioritize familiarity over reinvention

The leaked white replica model shows a book-style foldable design with rounded corners, curved side rails, and a dual rear camera setup positioned vertically on the back panel. The overall appearance has triggered immediate comparisons to devices like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold lineup and several foldables from Chinese brands.

That familiarity is especially interesting because Apple has historically avoided entering product categories until it believes the technology and user experience are mature enough. The company has reportedly spent years testing multiple foldable prototypes internally while delaying a commercial launch over concerns related to hinge durability, display creasing, and long-term reliability.

The “iPhone Ultra” branding attached to the leak also aligns with previous rumors suggesting Apple may reserve foldable devices for an entirely new ultra-premium category above the Pro Max lineup.

Reports over the past year have repeatedly suggested Apple’s first foldable iPhone could arrive with a large inner display, titanium construction, and a significantly thinner hinge design compared to current foldable competitors. Some analysts also believe Apple is prioritizing minimal display creasing as one of the defining features of the device.

The replica itself, however, suggests Apple may be taking a more conservative design approach externally while focusing its innovation on refinement rather than visual experimentation.

Why this matters

Foldable smartphones remain one of the few major hardware categories where Apple still has no product presence. Meanwhile, companies like Samsung, Huawei, OPPO, and Honor have spent years iterating on foldable hardware.

Apple entering the foldable market could dramatically reshape consumer interest in the category, much like the company previously did with smartwatches and tablets. At the same time, the leak raises an important question: Does Apple still need to create visually unique hardware, or is perfecting usability and ecosystem integration enough?

What happens next

Apple has not officially acknowledged the existence of a foldable iPhone, and current reports suggest the device is still at least a year or two away from launch. Multiple analysts expect Apple’s first foldable device to arrive sometime around late 2027 or beyond, likely positioned as an ultra-premium product with a very high price tag.

For now, replica leaks like this mainly offer hints about Apple’s possible design direction rather than final hardware confirmation. Still, if the rumors prove accurate, Apple’s foldable future may look less like a sci-fi experiment and more like a refined version of a category Android brands have already spent years building.