Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra HONEST REVIEW

Dragon iL

Link To Shop From Amazon : https://amzn.to/4ldev1K  This Item Will Be released on March 11, 2026. Save The Link Or The Video  Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra is here  and it might be their most refined flagship yet. In this review, I break down everything from the new Privacy Display and APV codec to the low-light camera improvements, plus my thoughts on the Cobalt Violet colorway. After spending real time with it, here's what you need to know.   #GalaxyS26Ultra​ #Samsung​ #S26Ultra​ #RjeyTech​

Transcript

00:00This phone was supposed to be another boring upgrade. Same sensors, same battery, same Samsung.

00:05But after 72 hours of actually using this phone, I'm convinced we've got it all wrong. You see,

00:10Samsung gave me this phone early. And what started as another fine incremental update has turned me

00:15into reconsidering where this phone sits in the flagship rankings. The cameras are better than

00:19what the specs suggest. The display has a feature that should have existed years ago. And the low

00:24light performance, it might just be the single biggest night photography jump Samsung has ever

00:28made in one generation. So let me break it all down. Let's start with what you noticed the moment

00:33you pick up this device. The leaks had everyone convinced that Samsung was going full circle,

00:38like iPhone level rounded. That's not what happened. This phone is slightly more rounded than the S25

00:43Ultra. It's subtle, but it's enough that this phone generally feels more comfortable in the hands.

00:47That feeling when you'd hold the S24 Ultra and the sharp corners would dig into your palms is

00:51completely gone. And this really does make a real difference during long sessions. Samsung also made

00:56a material switch this year, going from titanium to armor aluminum. I know what you're thinking.

01:01Aluminum? That feels like a downgrade on paper. But in the hand, it honestly just feels good.

01:05The phone is slightly thinner at 7.9 millimeters and a little bit lighter. And the aluminum does help

01:10with the heat dissipation, which we'll talk about a bit later. And this cobalt violet colorway, man,

01:14it just looks incredible. It's this deep dark purple that shifts depending on the light. Sometimes it's

01:19almost black. Other times it's like a really rich violet. It's easily one of the best Samsung colors

01:23in years. Oh, and the S Pen, you can now insert it the wrong way. So be warned. It sounds

01:29minor,

01:30but when you're fumbling with the S Pen orientation, it's more annoying than you think. Surprisingly,

01:34I've actually been using the S Pen more this time around. Signing contracts, writing down quick

01:38grocery lists. It's one of those features that keeps the Ultra, well, Ultra. Now one more design note,

01:43the haptics. They're a little bit more refined this year, a little bit tighter,

01:47a little bit more precise. It's still not quite at the pixel level of haptic excellence, but the gap

01:51I feel is closing. Alright, now for the display. On paper, it's the same 6.9 inch Quad HD Plus

01:57dynamic AMOLED panel running at 120 hertz. But Samsung has done a lot of work underneath the

02:02surface. First off, this is now a true 10-bit panel. That means instead of the 16 million colors

02:07that we've been getting, this display can now render over 1 billion colors. In practice, that means

02:13smoother gradients, less banding dark scenes, and a wide range of tones. It's one of those upgrades

02:18you might not notice immediately, but the second you put it next to the S25 Ultra, you can see it.

02:22Samsung also upgraded the Pro Scaler with a new algorithm for sharper upscaling of lower resolution

02:27content. And the enhanced mobile digital natural image engine system is doing four times the color

02:33processing precision. In layman's terms, this display just looks better. It's more accurate and

02:37more lifelike. The anti-reflective coating has been downgraded just by a bit. It's a bit less reflective

02:42than the S25 Ultra. And honestly, it's still better than what we're getting on the iPhone 17 Pro. So

02:47Gorilla Glass Armor 2 continues to be the standard here. But the real showstopper, actual innovation

02:52on this display is the privacy display. This is the headline feature. And if Apple had launched this

02:58first, we would not hear the end of it. Using a combination of narrow and wide pixels in the OLED

03:03panel, Samsung can now dim the screen so people next to you literally cannot see what's on your

03:08phone. You can apply it to the full screen, specific apps, or just your pin entry. And the best part

03:13about all of this is, you can set it up with Galaxy Routines. So it automatically turns on when you

03:18leave

03:18the house and turns off when you come home. You set it and you forget it. It does dim the

03:22brightness of

03:22the display a tiny bit when it's active, but not enough to be a problem. This is one of the

03:27most

03:27innovative features we've seen in the smartphone space in a very long time. Now under the hood, the S26 Ultra

03:33is one of the Snapdragon 8 Elite 10.5 for Galaxy. The larger vapor chamber now extends alongside the

03:38sides of the processor for better heat dissipation. So sustained performance should be noticeably better

03:42for gaming and heavy multitasking. You also get UFS 4.1 storage, LPDDR5X RAM, and depending on your

03:48configuration, either 12 or 16 gigabytes. I mean, it's faster, apps open quicker, AI tasks process faster,

03:55everything just feels snappier. Samsung ships this with Android 16 and One UI 8.5, and you are getting

04:007 years of OS updates. That's a commitment through Android 23. Now for the charging. 60 watts wired up

04:07from 45 watts, and 25 watts wireless with Qi 2 support, up from 15 watts. This is one of those

04:12upgrades that sounds incremental on a spec sheet, but you feel it in daily use. Getting to 75% in

04:17just

04:17about 30 minutes changes the rhythm of how you charge. Quick top-ups while getting ready in the

04:22morning, and you're good for the entire day. The 5000mAh battery is unchanged, but with the new

04:26chip's efficiency gains, the battery life has been solid. Obviously, it's too early to make any sort

04:31of a conclusion. The volume is great as well. You get good surround sound separation, and it does get

04:35pretty loud. Now, I haven't noticed the new Now Nudge feature working yet, which is supposed to

04:39proactively suggest relevant info when you need it. I'll keep an eye on Now Nudge as I use this phone

04:44a

04:44little bit more. Okay, now for the cameras. This is where Samsung is being undersold. Yes, these sensors are

04:49technically the same. The same 200 megapixel main camera, the same 50 megapixel ultrawide, same 50 megapixel

04:555x periscope telephoto, but the optics have changed significantly. The main camera now has an

05:00f1.4 aperture up from f1.7. That's 47% more light hitting the sensor. The 5x telephoto went from

05:07f3.4

05:07to f2.9, 37% more light. In camera terms, that's close to half a stop of additional light on

05:14both

05:14lenses. And in low light, this is massive. Samsung also enabled multi-frame HDR at the full 200 megapixel

05:20resolution for the first time and added a new 24 megapixel shooting mode that gives you a

05:25nice middle ground between detail and processing quality. The selfie camera is still 12 megapixel

05:29hardware, but Samsung improved the AI ISP processing, so you get more natural skin tones and finer details.

05:35It's basically a software win on the same hardware. Now, from these samples that I've been shooting

05:39over the past 72 hours, the improvements are real. I was walking around San Francisco and shooting

05:44everything I could. Street scenes, architecture, portraits of other creators at the event, selfies

05:49with my wife, and across the board, the processing feels very different this year, in a very good way.

05:54Outdoor shots on an overcast day, the dynamic range is immediately impressive. Cloudy skies retain full

05:59detail without blowing out, and the shadowed brick sidewalks still have tone and texture. You can zoom

06:04into the architectural details on the building, individual bricks, ornamental stonework, and the

06:09sharpness just holds. The colors are punchy but natural. This is not the oversaturated Samsung look from

06:14a few years ago. Samsung has dialed in the processing towards something more vibrant and lifelike, with stronger

06:20contrast compared to the S25 Ultra, which could sometimes produce flatter, more muted images.

06:25But where I've been particularly impressed though, is indoors. I shot a bunch of candids and

06:30portraits of other creators in mixed lighting. Think warm fireplace glow, overhead event lighting,

06:35window light coming through a lattice pattern, and the S26 Ultra just handled all of it. Skin tones

06:40across different confections look natural and accurate. Subject separation on portrait style shots

06:44is clean with smooth creamy bokeh that doesn't have harsh cutoff artifacts. You can see individual

06:49fabric textures on jackets and sweaters while the background melts away naturally. The selfie camera

06:54also surprised me. It's got the same 12MP hardware, but the AI ISP processing improvements that Samsung

06:59mentioned, you can actually see it. My wife and I took a couple of selfies indoors, and the skin tones

07:04are warm and natural. The edge detection between us and the background is clean, and the bokeh is smooth.

07:09This is a noticeable step up from the S25 Ultra selfie experience.

07:12The wider F1.4 aperture, combined with the improved metography processing, should mean even cleaner

07:18low light results. And after testing it, it does deliver. This is where the S26 Ultra really pulls

07:23ahead. Okay, so here's what's actually happening under the hood, and why the low light is so much

07:28better. It's not just the wider aperture, although that F1.4 letting in 47% more light is huge. The

07:33real

07:33magic here is the combination of three things working together. First is the hardware. More light hitting

07:38the sensor means the camera doesn't have to crank up the ISO as high, which means less noise from the

07:42start. That's just physics. But second, and this is the part that Samsung really didn't shout about,

07:48the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5's AI enhanced ISP now analyzes scenes element by element. It processes faces,

07:55backgrounds, textures, and objects separately, optimizing each one individually for color,

08:01noise, and detail. So your face in a dimly lit restaurant gets different processing than the

08:06background behind you. That is fundamentally smarter than applying one blanket noise reduction filter across

08:11the entire image. And third, Samsung built sensor-specific noise profiles into nitrography systems.

08:16Every camera sensor produces noise differently. The main sensor, the ultrawide, the telephoto,

08:21all have unique noise patterns based on their physical characteristics. The S26 Ultra's processor now

08:26targets the specific noise signature of each individual sensor rather than using a generic noise

08:31reduction algorithm. The result is cleaner images that preserve actual detail instead of smearing everything

08:36smooth. And in practice, night shots are dramatically cleaner. Restaurants, street scenes after sunset,

08:42dimly lit interiors, the difference compared to the S25 Ultra is immediately visible. More detail on

08:47the shadows, accurate skin tones in warm artificial light, and the 5x telephoto at f2.9 pulling usable

08:53shots in conditions where it would have been a noisy mess last year. Samsung has always talked to

08:57up nightography, but this year it actually feels like a generational leak. The 5x telephoto now uses a

09:03w-shaped folded lens design, which allowed Samsung to make their phone thinner. But the trade-off is the

09:07minimum focus distance went from around 25cm to about 60-70. So if you were using that 5x for close

09:14-up

09:14telemacro shots of food or flowers, you'll notice you can't get as close anymore. That's a real trade-off

09:19and something to be aware of. For everything else though, the telephoto is better than it was last year.

09:23But now let's talk about the video, because this is where the S26 Ultra makes a real statement. It's the

09:28first phone in the world to support Samsung's APV codec, Advanced Professional Video. This is

09:33Samsung's answer to Apple's ProRes, and in some ways it does go further. APV is open source,

09:39royalty-free, and delivers visually lossless video quality with 422 chroma subsampling,

09:45meaning cleaner gradients, better skin tones, and more color data for grading. Samsung says it's about

09:5020% more storage efficient than comparable codecs. You get two profiles, APV422HQ for maximal quality,

09:56and APV422HQ when you need smaller files. Both support HDR and log recording. And the log workflow

10:03is where this thing gets really exciting for creators. You can shoot in Samsung Log with a

10:07flat profile to preserve maximum dynamic range. Then apply a cinematic LUT directly onto your phone.

10:12Samsung baked in four creative LUTs. Blockbuster, Coming of Age, Romance, and Thriller. Each one

10:18giving your footage a completely different mood. Blockbuster goes for that orange and teal Hollywood

10:22look. Coming of Age gives you that soft pastel K-drama vibes, but hopefully Samsung lets us import

10:27our own custom LUTs in a future update. That would be really cool. You also get zebra patterns and

10:31false color monitoring when shooting and log. Pro level features, which I never expected on

10:35your phone. The footage is already compatible with DaVinci Resolve and LumaFusion, and you can

10:39record directly to an external storage. I've been really impressed with APVlog video. You can now

10:44genuinely take cinematic footage on your phone and grade it like you would footage from a dedicated

10:48camera. So here's the bottom line. The Galaxy S26 Ultra looks like an S25 Ultra with a fresh coat of

10:54paint. But 72 hours in, the story is completely different. The wider apertures, the dramatically

11:00improved low light, the 10-bit display, the privacy display, APV video, 60 watts fast charging, the design

11:06refinements, these all add up to a phone that is meaningfully better every single day. And I think

11:11this just perfectly sums it up. 60 watts charging, 10-bit display, faster wireless charging, privacy display,

11:16larger vapor cooling chamber, larger aperture, improved front-facing camera, these are all

11:21hardware changes. And Apple has shipped lesser upgrades and gotten bigger hype. But when you

11:25actually use this phone, it speaks for itself. The Galaxy S26 Ultra might just be the most

11:31underrated flagship upgrade of 2026. Samsung didn't reinvent the wheel. They made the wheel spin

11:36smoother, quieter and faster. And sometimes, that's exactly what makes a great phone. I'm going to keep

11:40using this as my daily driver and come back with a full long-term review. But if you were on

11:45the fence

11:45about upgrading from the S25 Ultra or even the S24 Ultra, this one deserves a closer look. The sum

11:51of all of these parts is greater than what the spec sheet suggests. If you guys made it to the

11:54end of

11:55this video, drop a dolphin emoji down in the comments below. I would love to know who my true supporters

11:58are. And of course, make sure you guys do subscribe and I catch you guys all in the next one.

12:02This phone

12:02is kind of amazing, bro.

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