I’ve been reviewing phones for a long time, and Samsung’s new Galaxy S26 Ultra might have one of the best features on an Android device for LGBTQ folks… hear me out.
For this hands-on, I’ll focus on the Galaxy S26 Ultra as Samsung has spent a lot of time making this device more special than the others with its new ultimate feature for the gays, the ‘Privacy Screen.’
While I’ve praised Samsung for innovation over the last year with handsets like the Galaxy S25 Edge, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and the Galaxy TriFold, the company’s flagship S series continues to be a bit boring in comparison. Samsung again has gone with the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” methodology. This seems like a con, but Samsung didn’t take any chances with the S26 Ultra, because the South Korean tech giant leaves experimentation to its other handsets.
The Samsung S26 Ultra is very similar to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but the South Korean tech giant has made the phone better, maybe not in the ways you expected or wanted, but these updates are worthwhile. These updates include faster charging, brighter pictures, and the Privacy Screen — and while I joke it’s big for the gays, it’s actually a pretty notable feature for literally anyone who cares about privacy.
I went hands-on with the Galaxy S26 Ultra a couple of times, but I still have to take the device out in the wild and put it through its paces to test out the camera, battery, processing and whether its AI features are as good as they seemed — because surprisingly, some of those AI functionalities definitely seem worth it.
The Grindr Phone
Imagine this: you’re sitting on the very crowded TTC, and you get a notification from someone with the user name ‘bigduck69.’ You open the message and receive a non-consensual nude. Firstly, you’re annoyed because someone just flashed you, but secondly, you’re embarrassed because a stranger is sitting beside you, and now they think you casually look at nudes when you’re on the bus.
Now, picture this same scenario, but instead, you have the Galaxy S26 Ultra and while you’re annoyed because someone just flashed you, no one around you can see your screen. After all, you have the Privacy Screen turned on and set to go private whenever you open Grindr.
Samsung announced its new Privacy Screen ahead of the launch of the Galaxy S26. The South Korean tech maker says that this is a hardware and software protection with pixel-level privacy. This will prevent peering eyes from taking a look at your phone’s screen, and works if your screen is horizontal or vertical.
In practice, the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s Privacy Screen only allows the person using the handset to see the screen; if you’re trying to peek from different angles, the display looks black. This is similar to using one of those privacy screen protectors that are usually sold separately.
While I used the Grindr example because this has definitely happened to me, the Privacy Screen can also work if you want to take a look at your banking apps when you’re in line at a store. It’ll also block out notifications you receive, and it can even turn on when you’ve unlocked your device and insert your PIN or passcode.
The Privacy Screen wasn’t on my bingo card for the S26 Ultra, but it’s a pretty useful feature, and literally everyone I’ve told about it thinks it’s a good idea. And great for when you get unexpected dick pics.
Samsung says the Privacy Screen could potentially increase your battery life, considering it’s turning off diagonal pixels, but this may be negligible. During a Samsung roundtable about AI, I asked about whether Samsung considered using your phone’s camera and AI to determine if you’re looking at your phone or if someone is peeking at it, and I was told there was more room for error, turning on the Privacy Screen because someone walked by you, for instance, and it could potentially drain your battery, but the company is looking into this.
“Call me an Uber”
While the Privacy Screen might be the most appealing feature on the Galaxy S26 Ultra to many, the company’s focus this — and last — year is AI. Samsung has brought a lot of AI features to the table, and I definitely don’t think all of them are useful; however, if you’re okay with AI that can make your life a little easier, Samsung does have something new for you.
Starting with agentic AI, you’re now able to call an Uber by pulling up the Assistant and saying “Call me an Uber” followed by your desired destination. Your phone will then go through the steps of opening the Uber app, finding your location, your destination, and then waiting for you to confirm the Uber. You’re able to do other things on your device while this is happening. Additionally, you can interrupt at any point or simply watch your device go through all the steps. An agentic AI isn’t necessary to order an Uber; it’s not really necessary at all, but I’m up to try anything that helps me save time. So far, this is the only feature on the S26 that uses agentic AI, but Samsung is looking to expand the agentic features on its devices.
Another new feature is called Now Nudge, which works similarly to Google’s Magic Cue. Whenever you have a messaging app open, the AI will attempt to make suggestions to make life easier. For instance, if a friend asks about what you’re doing on a certain day, the AI will read your calendar for you and suggest a reply based on what you have scheduled. The AI will also allow you to pull up your calendar; it’ll go straight to the correct date and show what you have planned.
Another Now Nudge demo I saw showed someone asking for the pictures of their trip to Australia. The AI showed a ‘Shared Photos’ suggestion in the keyboard, tapping it brought them to the Gallery app, of all their photos together in Australia. You then select the photos and press done, and the AI brings you back to the conversation, where all you have to do is press send. I saw these demos in action, but after the failure of the Magic Cue launch, I definitely would want to try it out myself. But from what I saw, it looked promising.
There’s also a new ‘Finder’ search tool that lets users easily look up information by typing. If you’re travelling and don’t remember what hotel you’re supposed to be heading to, type ‘hotel’ in the Finder tool and the AI will pull up instances of hotel on your handset, such as reservations, calendar events and emails to try and find the most relevant details for your query. It seemed to work well in practice, but again I’d like to try this out for myself.
Samsung has also improved Photo Assist, and I tried this out for myself, and it worked astonishingly well. It was able to add realistic-looking air to MobileSyrup contributor Ted Kritsonis. He said when he had hair, it looked different, but it was a pretty good look. Photo Assist also uses AI to combine photos. For instance, you’re able to add your dog to photos of you and your friends, and the AI will try its best to make the picture look realistic. I saw this in practice, and it also worked pretty well.
Tiny changes
Samsung has also made some hardware upgrades to the Galaxy S26 Ultra. The most notable change increases the aperture of the primary and the periscope lenses, allowing them to capture more light and take brighter pictures. The nightography on both cameras looked phenomenal in the dark room demo that Samsung set up. You could even zoom in and see pretty good details in the low-light picture. The S26 Ultra is also capable of adapting its photos for better performance underwater. When taking pictures under the water, there tends to be too much blue light, but your S26 Ultra is able to adjust the lighting and colour to make these images look better — but the handset is still not saltwater-proof, so you’ll need to have it in a saltwater-proof enclosure.
Horizontal lock is another new feature coming to the S26 Ultra, allowing users to keep videos stable even if they change the orientation of the device. This isn’t a huge update for me, but creators seem quite excited about it.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra is also more rounded than its predecessor, but not to a significant degree. It’s also slightly thinner and lighter, but as someone who’s had his hands on both devices, I could barely tell. While the battery remains the same size, Samsung has amped up its charging speeds and now features 60W wired and 25W wireless charging. And as expected, the device uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, which is supposedly more powerful in comparison to the regular 8 Elite Gen 5.
Optimistic
Those with the Galaxy S25 Ultra might be a little annoyed to learn they’re not getting the new Galaxy AI features like agentic AI and Now Nudge. Samsung says this is because the S25 Ultra isn’t powerful enough to run them.
But while that’s a bummer, Samsung did something else surprising with the Galaxy S26 series. The Galaxy S26 and the Galaxy S26 Ultra 256GB are more affordable than their predecessors. (However, Samsung also isn’t offering a 128GB S26 variant this year.) In a one-on-one interview with Raj Doshi, Head of Mobile at Samsung Canada, he shared that Samsung made these handsets more affordable because of their popularity. However, the company also made the other storage/RAM configurations more pricey, as the company is being affected by the increase in RAM prices worldwide.
While I don’t think Samsung took any big risks with the S26 Ultra, it seems like it’ll be just a solid experience, especially if the AI is everything it’s cracked up to be. While I love gimmicky hardware, I like my software to just work well and make my life easier, and it looks like Samsung is aiming for that experience.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra releases in Canada on March 11, and pre-orders open now.
