It probably will come as no surprise that Samsung claims its new S26 series delivers “the most powerful Galaxy experience yet.” The company announced the new phones during its big Unpacked 2026 event, and, like most new smartphones these days, this year’s models appear to be iterative updates to last year’s S25 phones.
The company particularly touted the S26 series’ cameras, but the interesting thing is, the camera hardware hasn’t much changed. If you look at the on-paper specs, you’ll mostly see the same numbers across the lens and sensor sizes. The S26 and S26+ have three rear cameras, while the S26 Ultra adds a fourth; all three phones have the same 12MP selfie camera. Really, the only hardware change is to the S26 Ultra’s 200MP main camera, which now has an f/1.4 aperture, compared to the f/1.7 aperture on the S25 Ultra’s 200MP camera. Otherwise, Samsung kept things pretty much the same.
The S26 cameras are still a decent upgrade over the S25’s
And yet, there are some clear advantages to the S26 series, especially the S26 Ultra. While the selfie cameras are the same as last year, they now use a new AI processor to bring out more detail: When there’s too much light in a shot, the S26 series can add virtual light to balance out the image. These phones are also better than previous models at filming video in low-light conditions, expanding on the company’s “Nightography” feature, which previously boosted the detail in photos; now, it works for video as well.
Speaking of video, Samsung says the S26 can automatically stabilize shots while maintaining a level image, even if you’re not looking at the frame, using “Super Steady with Horizontal Lock” (catchy name!).
If you pick up the Ultra, you’ll also get some pro video features. First, the phone supports the APV video codec, Samsung’s pro video codec, ideal for professional editors. Presumably, shooting in 8K APV will produce some large file sizes, which is why it’s great that the S26 Ultra supports recording to external storage, like the recent Pro iPhones. If shooting in log, you’ll be able to apply LUTs to your footage, to customize the overall color-grading of your images.
One smaller upgrade is Ocean Mode, which takes detailed images in underwater environments. This feature was previously available to professionals only, but the S26 series gets it as part of the Expert RAW setting.
Credit: Samsung/YouTube
Samsung added a surprise twist to Unpacked, revealing towards the end of the show that the entire livestream was filmed using S26 Ultras. That follows Apple’s playbook of recording events with iPhones, though Apple doesn’t do livestreams anymore. As far as I can tell, this is the first time a company like Samsung has livestreamed its entire presentation on one of its smartphone cameras. (Though both Apple and Samsung also deck out their smartphones with expensive equipment to capture these images.)
What do you think so far?
Credit: Samsung/YouTube
Galaxy AI brings new camera features to the S26 too
Samsung’s event focused a lot on Galaxy AI, and its benefits also applied to the cameras. For instance, the document scanner on the S26 can remove extraneous subjects from scans, such as your thumb or finger, and can combine multiple scans into one PDF.
You can also use Galaxy AI for prompt-based editing. Samsung showed off how to merge two photos at once, so that the subject of one image is “seamlessly” edited into another. The example added a dog from one image into the arms of a woman sitting at a coffee shop in another. Other examples of prompt-based edits include swapping outfits in an image, or editing a bite out of a cupcake.
Credit: Samsung/YouTube
None of these upgrades alone are necessarily worth upgrading from the S25, but they show that Samsung is quite confident in the features and quality of its cameras. Even if you don’t care for AI editing, it’s helpful to have added details when shooting in low light, and any budding cinematographers may enjoy the pro features—especially codec support and the ability to shoot to external storage. But, as always, we’ll need to wait for reviewers to get their hands on the phones before we know how good these cameras really are.
