We spent two weeks with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra — and we mean that literally. It went with us on photography walks in the afternoon heat, on the LRT during the morning rush, through late-night Netflix sessions, and into the office every single day. We took it to street shoots, used it for gaming, and pushed every AI feature we could find. Here are our thoughts about the device, raw and unfiltered.
Editor
Denise chevron_right
Table of Contents
Design & Build Quality
Not light, not heavy - just right
The first thing we noticed when we picked up the S26 Ultra was how well-balanced it felt in the hand — not light, not heavy, just right. Even after long stretches of use, our wrists never fatigued the way it sometimes does with larger phones. Watching movies horizontally and holding it up for gaming were both comfortable for extended periods.
Though it gets hot outside
Outdoors in the sun, though, that comfort disappears fast. During photography walks in direct sunlight, the phone heats up quickly enough to make our hands genuinely uncomfortable. We found ourselves having to set it down or switch hands more than we expected. So, for anyone who runs, films outdoors, or just doom-scrolls in the afternoon heat, this is worth knowing up front.
Fits easily into pockets
We also like how it fits easily into the pocket and bag. While we tested the phone across a full weekend of street photography (swinging it in and out of our pockets and bag repeatedly), it fit well, snug in both front and back pockets. There was one thing we didn't enjoy, though: sitting down with it still in your pocket. Crossing your legs with this phone in your pocket is not comfortable at all, so we ended up just holding it whenever we weren’t actively using it.
Lovely matte finish
As for the phone's matte finish, this one handles everyday grime better than most. The thing about most matte finishes is that you'd need to use a microfibre cloth to properly remove stubborn marks. With the S26 Ultra, the smudges wiped off easily with any cloth we had on hand — a t-shirt, a sleeve, whatever was nearby - even after sweaty walks. The fact that we didn't need to carry an additional microfibre cloth around to clean the phone is a small but real win.
The S Pen and button placements disappointed us a little
Now, for the S Pen. On the S25 Ultra, you could slot the pen back in any orientation, and it would click into place. On the S26 Ultra, however, it has to go in a specific way. That sounds manageable until you are in the middle of a shoot or a meeting and you shove the pen back in the wrong way — and then do it wrong again. We had to reinsert it multiple times. It is a strange step backwards from a phone that otherwise feels refined.
Button placement is another minor frustration. With the volume and lock buttons stacked on the same side, we kept accidentally hitting lock when we meant to adjust volume during music playback. This design might be logical for one-handed reach, but it is disruptive in practice, especially when using it in the non-dominant hand, where nothing about the button positions felt intuitive.
Display Experience
True-to-life colours
Indoors, this screen is a pleasure. Colours are accurate and vivid without crossing into oversaturation, and the high refresh rate made everything — scrolling, animations, transitions — feel noticeably smoother than on our daily phones. Coming from a 60Hz device, the difference hit us immediately on day one, and we never quite got used to going back.
But only indoors
Bring it outdoors, however, and things start falling apart. Even at maximum brightness, we struggled to see shot composition clearly during daytime photography. We found ourselves squinting and angling the screen, trying to make out what we were looking at. For a camera-forward phone at this price, that is a real limitation.
Privacy Display
Moving on to the Privacy Display, an actual new feature on the S-series. The Privacy Display gave us some reassurance while riding the LRT because it reduces what people can see from an angle. But because it dims the screen in the process, using it outdoors in daylight means that even we had difficulty seeing what was on screen. We kept toggling it on and off, which defeats the purpose of having it as a quick toggle. In short, it would probably be more useful when you're indoors, not in bright sunlight. That's something to consider.
Always-On Display
The Always-On Display is one we ended up turning off. When we were working from home, sitting in a café, or watching TV, the glowing screen kept pulling our attention, and sleeping next to it with AOD on was not pleasant (we sleep in complete darkness, and the light was too much). For some people, this will be useful; for us, it was just noise.
Everyday Performance
Opening WhatsApp, flipping between Instagram and the browser, switching mid-TikTok to reply to a message — all of it was smooth, and we did not hit any lag. The phone handled casual gaming without issue, and even when we pushed the graphics settings higher, the heat buildup never seemed to affect performance. The camera in particular stayed snappy throughout, even during long outdoor shoots when the body was noticeably warm.
The Camera is Impressive, But With Caveats
We had a lot of fun shooting with the S26 Ultra. The camera is intuitive to use for composition, the colours in daylight are bright and vivid, and using all the zoom modes — from ultrawide to telephoto — felt natural. The device's AI processing has meaningfully improved over the S25, particularly in challenging lighting and subject-detection scenarios.
That said, holding the S26 and S25 side by side, the difference is smaller than the upgrade cycle suggests. The S26 renders images slightly brighter, but it reads less like an optical improvement and more like someone turned up the exposure in editing. If you are already on an S25, the camera is not a reason to upgrade.
Selfie, maybe?
Skin tones are where we have the most consistent issues. The rear camera smooths skin to an almost waxy finish — pores gone, complexion evened out past what looks real. For the front camera, darker skin tones in particular come out muddy and flat. Frankly, we would not feel comfortable using this phone for selfies as our primary device. Samsung has the processing power to do better here, and we hope a software update addresses it.
Night Mode
Night Mode performs well when we shoot with intention, such as with architecture, portraits in controlled environments, and deliberate compositions. When we just pulled the phone out to grab something spontaneous in low light, the results felt overprocessed and slightly hazy. It rewards patience more than it rewards instinct.
Video stabilisation and Horizontal Lock
Video stabilisation was one of our highlights — right up until it wasn’t. Walking shots, panning, even handheld at 10x zoom, all looked remarkably steady. We have shaky hands, and we were genuinely surprised at how clean the footage was. But the moment we tried running shots, the S26 Ultra actually performed worse than the S25. Horizontal Lock did not compensate as we expected, and compared to the S25’s Steady Mode under the same conditions, the regression was noticeable. That one stung a little.
Creative Studio
Creative Studio was one of the more interesting things to experiment with. For broad, simple prompts — event posters, basic illustrations, general scenes — it delivers functional results. We were genuinely surprised it could render text within images with reasonable accuracy. Where it falls over is specificity. We tried prompts based on places in Terengganu and small towns in England, and the outputs were generic and off. The more specific the request, the further the result drifted from what we had in mind. Useful for budget marketing materials; not a replacement for a real illustrator.
Battery Life & Charging
The battery on this phone is, frankly, wild. During lighter days — social media, some calls, a bit of YouTube — we went four days on a single charge. Four days. Even on heavier days with filming, gaming, and extended camera use, we never needed a mid-day top-up. Battery anxiety simply did not exist during this review period, and that changed how we used the phone in ways that are hard to quantify.
Charging heat is the one caveat, as the phone got uncomfortably hot while charging at home. But at the office, using different cables and a different plug, it barely warmed up at all. Our best guess is that the heat is cable or adapter-dependent rather than a hardware issue, but it is worth testing your setup if you notice the same thing.
Connectivity & Biometrics
Wi-Fi was one of those things we stopped thinking about entirely — which is exactly what you want. Walking into the office or getting home, the phone was already connected before we had taken off our shoes. Connecting to new networks, switching between hotspots from different phone brands, all of it was effortless.
Pairing with the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro was reliable because we never had to manually connect after the initial setup. There were occasional, brief audio stutters during music playback, but they were short enough that we had to remind ourselves to note them down for this review. Not a dealbreaker by any stretch.
The fingerprint sensor is fast enough that we stopped using the lock button almost entirely. It just works, consistently. Face unlock, on the other hand, is something else. Coming from an iPhone 15 where Face ID shows a confirmation icon before unlocking, the S26 Ultra just… opens. No visual cue, no step — it is already unlocked by the time you have registered that you looked at it. It felt unnatural for the first few days, but then it became addictive.
Agentic AI: The Real Upgrade
This is where the S26 Ultra most clearly earns its ‘Ultra’ label. The difference from earlier Galaxy flagships is not the individual AI features, but in fact, the philosophy behind them. The phone has shifted from tools you have to open to intelligence that works in the background. After a couple of days, it starts to feel less like using a phone and more like being assisted by one.
Now Brief
Now Brief has grown considerably since the S25. It now pulls contextual information across your apps without being prompted. We were invited to an event via email, and it surfaced in our Now Brief without us ever adding it to the calendar. The longer you use the phone, the more it learns, and the more useful the summaries become.
Now Nudge
Now Nudge does its job well within Samsung’s native apps. It reads message context and prompts you at the right moment, such as reminding you about your calendar, suggesting photos to attach, and flagging things you mentioned earlier. However, we can confidently say that all, if not most, Malaysians use WhatsApp to communicate daily, and because there is no third-party support for this feature, it is only partially solving the problem it was built for.
Semantic Search
This one genuinely surprised us. We were trying to find the location of an event we’d been invited to — we couldn't remember whether it came via WhatsApp, email, or Messages. We just described what we were looking for, and the phone found it and told us where it came from. No app-switching, no scrolling through threads. It removed a whole step we did not realise we were taking every day.
Circle to Search 3.0
Circle to Search remains one of the most naturally integrated AI shortcuts on any phone. The 3.0 update lets you search for multiple items within a single image at once, rather than one at a time. A small change that makes a real difference in how quickly you can get answers without breaking flow.
Multi-Agent AI (Bixby, Gemini, Perplexity)
Three AI assistants on one phone should sound like chaos. In practice, once you understand the lanes, it is actually well organised. Bixby handles system-level tasks, such as toggling settings, enabling split-screen, and cleaning the notification shade. Gemini handles cross-app and ecosystem tasks, and Perplexity is for deep research with cited answers. After a few days of use, reaching for the right one became second nature.
Unfortunately, the feature we were most excited to test — Gemini’s ability to execute tasks inside third-party apps on your behalf, like booking a ride or making a reservation — is not available in Malaysia yet. We got a hands-on look at it at Unpacked in San Francisco, and it is genuinely impressive. Watching it navigate into a third-party app and complete an action without you lifting a finger is the kind of thing that makes you reconsider what a phone is supposed to do. When it arrives here, it will be a significant upgrade to daily life.
Our Verdict
After two weeks, our honest read is that the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is more of a refinement than a revolution - and in most areas, a very good one. The battery lasted longer than any Samsung we have tested. Its AI layer genuinely changed how we used the phone day-to-day. Performance never let us down. And the camera, while not a dramatic leap over the S25, remains among the strongest on any Android device.
However, we would be lying if we said we didn't feel thwarted using it: squinting at the screen outdoors, selfies that flatten darker skin tones, an S Pen we had to reinsert three times before getting it right, and a Horizontal Lock that somehow regressed from the S25. Although these are not dealbreakers on their own, together they are a reminder that no phone — even at this price — is without compromise.
If you are a professional or content creator who will actually use what this phone offers, the value is there — especially with seven years of software updates behind it. If you are upgrading from an S25 Ultra, we would honestly tell you to wait. But if you are coming from something older and want the best Android experience available in Malaysia right now, this is it.