Samsung is focusing on (almost) all the wrong things for the Galaxy S26 Ultra

Phone Arena

a day ago

Before you even think about going there, no, I don't have a crystal ball or a modern-day Nostradamus whispering details on unreleased smartphones in my ear, and despite rumors of an early launch, Samsung has yet to officially announce any relevant Galaxy S26 series information. Let's not mince words. If the Galaxy S26 Ultra ends up retaining the 5,000mAh battery capacity of this year's S25 Ultra (and last year's S24 Ultra, and the S23 Ultra before that, and the S22 Ultra before that, and the S21 Ultra, and the S20 Ultra), Samsung will have some explaining to do.
Apart from inexplicably leaving a major component of its Android super-flagship unchanged for seven (!!!) consecutive generations, the world's top handset vendor would trail behind the latest significant upgrades in that field by key rivals like OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor, Oppo, Vivo, and even Motorola.
If you had a choice, would you opt for a bigger S26 Ultra battery or a thinner profile than the S26 Ultra? | Image Credit -- PhoneArena It's going to be mighty hard for a "regular" consumer and casual mobile industry watcher to understand how something like the OnePlus 13T can pair a gargantuan 6,260mAh battery with a compact 6.32-inch screen while the 6.9-inch or so S26 Ultra has to settle for 5,000 or at most 5,400mAh cell capacity. Yes, there's apparently a chance of a small bump from 5,000mAh to "under" 5,400mAh, which would definitely be better than nothing. But a sub-5,500mAh battery will still be considered a disappointment and a compromise compared to what one can imagine the OnePlus 14 will bring to the table after the already impressive 6,000mAh-packing OnePlus 13. The disappointment will be made even greater if the Galaxy S26 Ultra removes the S Pen slot and fails to get its charging support over the 50W mark. Fortunately, all of these are still big ifs, but there's rarely this much smoke without fire in the rumor mill, even with seven or eight months ahead of a phone's commercial release. The stylus support elimination speculation makes me especially angry now that the battery size is expected to go (largely) unchanged. And yes, I realize the S Pen is not that frequently used by the vast majority of S25 Ultra or S24 Ultra owners, but that doesn't change the fact this is a nice feature to have at your disposal, as well as sort of a luxury statement for the best Android phones out there. To lose that and only gain (maybe) 400mAh battery capacity, as well as (maybe) 20 grams in weight and half a millimeter in thickness, would be shockingly ill-advised... if we didn't all remember Samsung's big Galaxy Note-killing mistake from just a few years ago. Yes, there's positive news to be found in the rumor mill of late regarding a Galaxy S26 Ultra that's otherwise starting to sound like a pretty depressing upgrade over the solid but largely unremarkable Galaxy S25 Ultra. No, I'm not talking about the potential reduction of Samsung's reliance on Google, which also seems like a foolish decision to me... that I don't think will ultimately materialize (at least not in 2026). Instead, what's surely exciting about the S26 Ultra is that it could be the only member of its family to use a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Whether that will be true around the world or not, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 SoC would give the 2026 Android hero a chance to keep up with the undoubtedly staggering raw power of Apple's fast-approaching iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Yes, the S26 Ultra's front-facing camera will probably be as visible as the one on the S25 Ultra. | Image Credit -- PhoneArena
Of course, I'd much rather see the entire Galaxy S26 lineup adopt a global single-chip Snapdragon strategy instead of splitting the world in Snapdragon and Exynos territories, or even worse, rely on Samsung-made Exynos silicon everywhere for non-Ultra models, but hey, we can't have it all.
Let's enjoy the little wins in that case, including Samsung's rumored decision to leave the S26 series without under-display camera technology. There's obviously nothing wrong with making a phone's selfie snapper as discreet as possible, but at the moment, that seems like a waste of precious resources that takes time and money to get just right while negatively impacting the performance of the actual imaging sensor. Let's just hope Samsung will find a better use of its resources than simply making the S26 Ultra as thin as it can.