I’ve been living with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra for a while now, and the ‘new phone’ smell has officially worn off. After my first 48 hours with the device, I was mostly charmed by the ergonomics and the slick Cobalt Violet finish of my review unit. But a premium flagship phone, especially the kind that starts at Rs 1.4 lakh, isn’t defined by a weekend; it’s defined by the small wins and the annoyances that crop up over time in daily usage.
I’ve used the Galaxy S26 Ultra as my daily driver for work and play, and I’ve genuinely put it through the wringer to see if it actually deserves that ‘Ultra’ tag. Let’s dive into the full review.
Also read: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra after 48 hours: First impressions and what stands out?
Risking it all for the Cobalt Violet finish
I’ll start with this: I haven’t put a case on this phone. In fact, I am a believer in using phones without cases, always. I know, it sounds like a recipe for a heart attack. I remember dropping my Galaxy S23 Ultra on a concrete floor, only to turn it over and find that the back glass had cracked from the side. But despite that incident, even after the phone was repaired, I used it without a case. My point is, when I’ve spent a good amount of money on a thing of beauty, I want to flaunt it. And it isn’t just about flaunting the looks; the Galaxy S26 Ultra has these subtle, rounded edges that make the 6.9-inch frame actually manageable. As I noted in my initial impressions, the phone doesn’t dig into my palm when I’m scrolling through Instagram past midnight.
The Cobalt Violet finish is a masterstroke. Honestly, I wasn’t too impressed with it when I saw it in the leaks. But, after using the device for the past few weeks, the finish has certainly grown on me. It’s got this deep, metallic lustre that looks professional and industrial without being boring. Again, I believe the white one is the best finish and I have seen it in person; it looks stunning. But the violet has a classy vibe that has grown on me. Also, because I’m not using a case, I also appreciate how slim this thing actually is.
However, there is a catch. Because it’s so slim and the camera island is so pronounced, the phone wobbles if you try to use it while it’s lying on a desk. It’s a bit of a design trade-off. I’ve personally adapted by just… not using it on a table. If it’s in my hand, the weight distribution is perfect. If it’s on a flat surface, it’s annoying. Pick your poison.
The Privacy display: A true quality of life feature
The headline feature of the Galaxy S26 Ultra this year is the Privacy Display, and I’m just going to say it: I can’t go back to a normal phone screen now. For those still wondering whether Samsung just slapped a software filter on this, it’s a hardware-level implementation that controls light dispersion at the pixel level.
How do I use it? I’ve set it to trigger automatically for WhatsApp, Instagram, and my gallery. Since I am always surrounded by someone or the other, at work and in public spaces, the ‘zero peeking’ tech kicks in effortlessly. So, if someone is standing right next to me, they see a dark screen, while I can see my chats or photos clearly. And, if I need maximum protection, I simply enable the ‘Maximum privacy protection’ toggle for the full throttle mode, and it becomes virtually impossible for anyone to see what I’m doing from the sides. Now, that’s what you call innovation.
Now, in doing so, does the display take a hit? Yes. Are the viewing angles as wide as they used to be? Nope. And there’s also a slight drop in brightness when the privacy mode is active. But honestly, who uses their phone from an angle, like sideways? So, when you’re looking at it head-on, and that’s how a phone is supposed to be looked at, it’s still the best 10-bit panel in the game: vibrant, sharp, and gorgeous. For me, the trade-off for actual privacy is a price I’m more than willing to pay.
One UI 8.5 and the AI goodness
One UI 8.5 is, in my opinion, the most mature Android skin out there. Because it’s not just about the big features, they are all here. But it’s also about the aesthetics and the ‘feel’ of the OS. The animations and transitions in One UI 8.5 are buttery fluid, and little touches like being able to deeply customise the control centre or having a native time zone converter in the clock app are some of the small attention to detail that make a big difference.
Then there’s the AI. I’m still waiting for that ‘agentic’ future we saw in the demos. The stuff where I can just tell Gemini to book me an Uber or order my usual dinner while I’m doing three other things. But the tools we actually have right now have moved past being just party tricks.
Here are some of the things I found really useful.
- Samsung Voice Recorder: This is the best voice recorder app on any phone, period. I recently recorded an 18-minute interview on the S26 Ultra, and it transcribed the whole thing, separated the speakers perfectly, and allowed me to export the text in seconds. Basically, with this phone, I don’t need to create different Google accounts just to log in to Otter.ai for transcription purposes. Everything is sorted natively on this phone.
- Photo Assist: This is a much better implementation of Generative Edit. It’s faster and the ‘Creative Studio’ mode can actually turn my rough S Pen doodles into usable art.
- AI Select: While I still mostly use Circle to Search to find information, I’ve also started to use AI Select a lot to take action on my screen content. In One UI 8.5, paired with the S Pen, AI Select is my one-stop tool to capture, edit and extract content for immediate use.
Which reminds me, the S Pen is also back in my daily routine. And not just for the AI Select stuff, but with the S26 Ultra, I’m back to signing PDFs and taking handwritten notes. It just feels natural.
My one major gripe with the software? Samsung, why is there still no native app locker? Secure Folder exists and it’s a cool privacy feature to have. But it’s kind of an overkill for when I just want a simple fingerprint on my personal apps. It’s the one missing piece in an otherwise perfect software experience on any smartphone out there.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 powerhouse
The Galaxy S26 Ultra is a beast when it comes to performance. I’ve been putting it through some serious load, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, combined with the massive VC cooling system, is a dream. Sure, it gets warm when you’re pushing it, but it never gets hot. And that’s what really matters.
For testing purposes, I’ve been playing COD and BGMI at 120fps, and it’s very smooth. Wuthering Waves at 60fps looks incredible on this display. But the real fun I’ve been having on this phone is with the emulators. I have a bunch of PlayStation ports installed on the S26 Ultra, and on one instance, I spent four hours straight playing God of War: Ghost of Sparta (revisiting the classic), and the phone didn’t even flinch. That session only took about 35% of the battery.
Also, here are some benchmark scores for those who care about numbers:
- Geekbench: 11,159 (multi-core), 3,658 (single-core)
- Antutu: 34,91,536
- 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme: 7,012 (Vulkan)
- 3D Mark Solarbay: 12,456 (Vulkan)
- 3D Mark SolarBay Extreme: 1,029 (Vulkan)
On top of this, the heat management is impressive. Even with the temperatures starting to climb here in the NCR region, the phone stays relatively cool during my typical day. I can spend hours on WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, X or jumping between Chrome and Keep without the back glass or the aluminium frame ever feeling uncomfortable.
Camera: Still the king of versatility
I’ve been genuinely impressed with how Samsung has handled the tuning on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. As for the hardware, we are looking at a 200MP main, 50MP ultra-wide, 50MP 5x telephoto and a 10MP 3x telephoto. For selfies, there’s a 12MP front camera.
Now, in the last year or two, we’ve seen brands like Vivo and Xiaomi really dial it in with their still photography, but there’s a consistency here with the Samsung. In fact, even with my iPhone 17 Pro Max. This consistency, I feel, still makes them the default, safe choice for most people.
I am putting up a few photos of similar scenes taken on both devices. On the iPhone, the images lean into that neutral, natural look with a slightly warmer white balance that I’ve always appreciated.
iPhone 17 Pro Max photo samples
But in typical Samsung fashion, the Galaxy S26 Ultra just hits differently for my taste. Below are the same scenes, but now from the S26 Ultra’s camera. Which phone do you think did it better?
Galaxy S26 Ultra photo samples
Of course, it isn’t that one is objectively ‘better’ than the other; it’s about what you prefer to look at. I personally love that punchy vibrancy Samsung brings to the table, along with a slightly cooler white balance that makes the images pop. I’ve been looking at comparison shots from both, and honestly, you can’t go wrong with either. It really just comes down to your personal aesthetic.
Galaxy S26 Ultra photo samples
That said, when you move past the ‘look’ and into the tech, the Galaxy S26 Ultra starts to pull away. The new f/1.4 aperture on the primary sensor performs quite well in all sorts of light. The shots are cleaner and have good amounts of detail and depth. Then there’s the zoom. Whether it’s 3x, 5x or 10x, Samsung is still the one to beat here. The versatility you get from those lenses is something you just don’t get on most phones out there.
Galaxy S26 Ultra photo samples
On the video front, it’s a bit of a split decision. Samsung’s Horizon Lock stabilisation is magical and it’s legitimately unlike anything I’ve seen on another phone. It stays level even when things get shaky. However, if I’m being honest, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is still my go-to for video in a general scenario. There’s just a gold standard feel to how iPhones handle overall video recording, especially the lens switching, that Android phones haven’t quite mastered yet.
So, while the iPhone stays in my pocket for video, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is always my go-to primary camera for stills. For the way I see things, it just gets it right more often than not.
Efficiency over raw capacity
Samsung is playing it safe again with a 5,000mAh battery on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. I’ll be honest, I would’ve loved to see them finally jump on the silicon-carbon bandwagon. They could have made the phone even slimmer with the same capacity, or kept the current footprint and crammed in a much larger cell. But there is a flip side to that ‘safe’ play. While silicon-carbon is the trendy new tech, its long-term durability is still a bit of a question mark. Samsung’s lithium-ion solution is a proven one. We know it’ll hold up for three or four years without a massive drop-off.
I actually saw this play out with a friend recently. He’s been using a OnePlus 13s for about ten months, and that thing has a massive 5,850mAh silicon-carbon battery. Initially, he was quite pumped about it, but now he’s complaining that it’s struggling to even last a full day. He’s already looking to upgrade just to get his battery life back. And this definitely made me wonder if these newer high-capacity silicon-carbon batteries in phones these days can actually go the distance or not.
Coming back, in my experience, the Galaxy S26 Ultra remains a very comfortable one-day phone. The optimisation is so good that I can leave it unplugged overnight without worrying about it draining by morning. On my moderate days, I’m usually heading to bed with about 40% left in the tank. Even on heavy days, the kind where I’m leaning on gaming or watching Netflix for hours at night, I’m still seeing about 20% by the time I hit the charger.
And speaking of chargers, the jump to 60W is a huge win. I’ve been using my 65W Asus PD charger, and I can get a full top-up from nearly empty in under 40 minutes. Since I rarely let my phone actually die, a quick 15-minute charge in the morning is usually more than enough to get me through the entire day.
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Final Verdict
Some phones have all the raw hardware in the world and come with bold claims, yet buyers just settle into using a flagship for making calls and watching reels. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is not one of them. I feel it’s going to appeal to a lot of folks, especially those who want to get work done. In my case, I use this phone to sign documents and I am literally playing PS2 games via an emulator on this thing. Then there’s the Privacy display, which makes sure that the things I want private on my screen, my chats, my photos, my notifications, are not visible to people peeking from the sides. When you talk about the AI stuff, the voice recording, the native transcription feature, and AI Select, the list goes on; you see, there’s a lot this phone can actually do effortlessly.
Yes, it is expensive, and it does come with its fair share of criticisms. For instance, the lack of a native app locker still feels like a glaring omission in 2026, and the S Pen doesn’t have Bluetooth connectivity. But coming back to the fundamentals, the sheer peace of mind the Galaxy S26 Ultra offers in terms of battery reliability and camera consistency is hard to find anywhere else.
If you’re coming from an S24 Ultra or older, you’re going to appreciate the attention to detail and the upgrades. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is a powerhouse that doesn’t scream for attention but earns it every time you pick it up. It’s the king of the hill, not just because it’s a Samsung, but because it’s the most complete package you can buy today.
Also read: Samsung Galaxy S26 in Digit Test Labs: What’s actually new this year?
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Aman Rashid
Aman Rashid is the Senior Assistant Editor at Digit, where he leads the website along with the brand’s YouTube, social media, and overall video operations. He has been covering consumer technology for several years, with experience across news, reviews, and features. Outside of work, Aman is a sneaker enthusiast and an avid follower of WWE, Dragon Ball, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. View Full Profile
