Samsung Galaxy S26 series: Top 5 new features of the latest flagships

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S26 series along with the Galaxy Buds 4 yesterday. The standard, plus, and ultra phones arrive as the successors to their respective models from last year. The new-generation flagships pack meaningful upgrades over their predecessor in terms of hardware and software features. Read on to know the top five new features on the Samsung Galaxy S26 series. 

Display

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra’s biggest talking point is the new Privacy Display feature. It can dim confidential information like notifications, pop-ups, password entries, etc when somebody glances at your phone’s screen from side angles. This will be quite helpful in public and crowded places. Privacy Display is backed by built-in hardware and it can be enabled manually or the phone can automatically switch on the feature when you’re on the go. 

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Meanwhile, the Samsung Galaxy S26’s display is slightly bumped to 6.3-inches (up from 6.2). The display on the standard and plus models is also shielded by Gorilla Armor 2 which is upgraded from Gorilla Glass Victus 2. 

Camera

The camera configuration on the entire Galaxy S26 series remains the same as last year, albeit, the main 200MP sensor on the ultra model having a wider aperture. The Super Steady mode on the Galaxy S26 Ultra gets a horizontal lock that is found on action cameras for shake-free footage. It uses the device’s gyroscope and accelerometer Additionally, the phone uses its 8K sensor to automatically crop a perfectly-framed 4K video output. 

Samsung has also added a new ‘real-time translation’ feature (via) in the camera app on the Galaxy S26 series. Compared to overlaid translation that displays original text along with translated text, you can simply point your phone to the foreign text and you will get the translated text in real-time in the viewfinder. 

Battery

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra retains the same 5,000mAh battery capacity. However, this time, the South Korean brand has significantly upgraded the wired and wireless charging speeds to 60W and 25W respectively from 45W and 15W. The Galaxy S26+ wireless charging also gets bumped from 15W to 20W while the wired charging speed remains the same. 

Samsung has increased the battery capacity of the Galaxy S26 from 4,000mAh to 4,300mAh but there’s no change to the charging speed. 

Software

The Samsung Galaxy S26 series ships with OneUI 8.5-based on Android 16 out of the box. As announced prior to the launch, the latest-generation flagships now support Perplexity AI assistant alongside Gemini and Bixby. This gives users the option to choose the AI agent of their choice depending on their needs.

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The Galaxy S26 family gets AI-powered Screenshot Analyzer that organizes screenshots automatically into eight different categories. The Call Screening feature makes it easier to manage calls by identifying unknown callers and summarizing intent. Samsung has also expanded support for Audio Eraser to third-party apps like Instagram, YouTube, Netflix etc. There’s new Now Nudge feature that is similar to Google Pixel’s Magic Cue that picks up context on your screen and suggest actions with helpful shortcuts. 

Hardware

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is powered by Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC in all regions. The 12GB RAM option comes with 256GB and 512GB storage whereas the 16GB RAM gets 1TB storage. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S26 and S26+ are equipped with Exynos 2600 in all regions except North America, China, and Japan. The standard and plus models now ship with base 256GB storage instead of 128GB. 

If you own the Samsung Galaxy S24 or older, the Galaxy S26 family feels like a clear leap. The upgrades aren’t major if you’re on last year’s models. And the newly announced software features should anyway trickle down to older flagships in the coming months. 

Stay tuned to Unboxed by Croma for more tech updates.