Samsung Galaxy S26 review: why isn’t this compact Android all-rounder more exciting?

Introduction

The base Samsung Galaxy has long been the compact all-rounder Android smartphone to beat. An established user base in the millions certainly helps, as does a lack of smaller-screen competition – but 2026 could be the year that all changes. The Galaxy S26 has seen the bare minimum of hardware upgrades and design changes, yet raises the price even further into premium territory.

It may ship with more storage as standard, but you’ll now be paying at least $899/£879 to get one in your pocket. Not every region gets the best version either, with Samsung once again using one chipset for the USA and another for Europe. Seeing how the Galaxy S26 Ultra and its world-first Privacy Display is commanding all the headlines, that leaves the vanilla model with little to shout about.

With the Google Pixel 10 series bringing welcome additions like PixelSnap magnetic charging and the Xiaomi 17 going big on battery, is it only the Samsung die-hards that should stick around?

Design & build: brings back the bump

Have Samsung’s flagship Galaxy trio ever looked as closely related as they do in 2026? All three now have the same silhouette, with more tightly curved corners bringing the Ultra in line with the mainstream models. There’s also a new raised camera island at the rear, taken almost wholesale from the Galaxy Z Fold 7 foldable phone.

I like that Samsung has removed the black bezels around the lenses themselves, as the iPhone 17‘s metal ones made the Galaxy S25 look a little cheap in comparison. The S26 is now firmly a high-end handset, with a flat mid-frame made from aluminium and matte rear glass that proved very fingerprint resistant during my testing. The symmetrical screen bezels are also satisfyingly slim.

At 7.2mm the thickness hasn’t changed at all from last year, but this is still a wonderfully compact phone. It feels balanced in your hand, with just the right amount of heft; it doesn’t feel at all toy-like, as some compact handsets can. IP68 water resistance is reassuring, even if it’s not quite class-leading anymore.

I like how fast the ultrasonic under-display fingerprint sensor was to detect my digits, even if they were wet. Samsung’s press-and-lift approach to registering new prints isn’t quite as slick as rivals that let you roll your finger around the screen surface, though.

One thing you won’t find at the sides is any kind of physical AI or camera key; just the regular power and volume buttons on the right. Samsung gets a thumbs up for not following the trend kicked off by Apple (and picked up by numerous Chinese phone brands). I do wish the firm had matched its rivals with more adventurous colour choices, though. Black, white, sky blue and cobalt violet are very similar to last year’s efforts – just one head-turning hue on the level of Apple’s Cosmic Orange would’ve been nice to see.

Screen & sound: minor gains

Break out the measuring tape, folks – it’s the only way you’ll spot the difference between the Galaxy S26 and its predecessor. This year’s model sees its display climb to 6.3in (up from 6.2in before), but the panel resolution hasn’t increased at all. It’s still better than Full HD and I can’t say I noticed the slightly lower pixel density.

You’re otherwise getting an unchanged AMOLED experience, with wonderfully dynamic colours, truly inky blacks and a huge contrast range, which helps give streaming videos plenty of impact. Lower resolution content looks a teeny bit crisper now thanks to ProScaler tech, but you’ve got to really go looking for it.

The 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate was always quick to adjust to what was onscreen, dropping right down for static content and cranking up for speedy, stutter-free scrolling. I had no reason to swap to the Standard mode, which simply caps things to 60Hz but still drops lower to save power when it can.

Brightness is unchanged, meaning the very best smartphones have widened the gap even further from last year, but a peak 2600 nits remains enough to give HDR videos plenty of punch. Outdoors, the High Brightness Mode (HBM) was good enough to ensure clear visibility even on a particularly bright day. A Google Pixel 10 Pro shines brighter in almost every situation, though.

Samsung’s clever Privacy Display tech is sadly reserved for the top-tier Galaxy S26 Ultra, as is the reflection-beating Gorilla Armor 2 cover glass. Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection is decent, though, remaining entirely blemish-free throughout my testing.

I found the Galaxy S26’s down-firing speaker and front-facing earpiece put in a slightly more nuanced performance than last year, with a largely balanced sound that sacrifices a little volume for greater all-round clarity. It’s not quite on the level of an iPhone 17 Pro for clarity, but comes very close.

Cameras: baby steps through software

Another Galaxy generation, another outing for the 50MP lead lens, 12MP ultrawide and 10MP, 3x zoom telephoto that’ve been Samsung’s go-to for almost five years at this point. The main snapper keeps its f/1.8 aperture lens, optical image stabilisation and dual pixel autofocus, while the optically stabilised telephoto maxes out at f/2.4. The ultrawide still doesn’t get autofocus, meaning it can’t double as a macro lens.

It’s rapidly falling off the pace for pixel count, however. Both the Pixel 10 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro have more than double the megapixels, and also reach further: Apple does 4x optical zoom while Google has 5x before sensor cropping or digital upscaling need to come into play, yet all can be had for similar money on a carrier contract.

My 3x shots here stayed close to Samsung’s usual vivid, HDR-heavy approach, with exposure, contrast and colour largely in a par with the lead lens. I did notice a bit of noise in the darker areas of shadow, though, and while the level of resolved detail was reasonable, it’s simply not on the level of its biggest Western rivals. The Xiaomi 17’s 2.6x telephoto might not get as close, but its computational depth blur is more nuanced for portraits and close-ups.

In good light the Galaxy S26’s 50MP main shooter puts in a decent, if not spectacular showing. It captures lots of dynamic range, was largely on point when it comes to white balance, and its colour treatment will get the popular vote. Texture detail is preserved for the most part, and there’s the smallest amount of background separation on closeups without having to reach for the Portrait mode. 2x snaps taken using a cropped sensor are virtually lossless.

The ultrawide is really best reserved for outdoor use in good sunlight, and even here things can be a little soft. Results dip further when you step inside or it gets even slightly dark. It’s definitely the weakest of the three rear lenses.

Samsung has taken an Apple-like approach to low light shooting, removing the manual Night mode function (unless you install the official Camera Assistant app from the Galaxy store) and only kicking in automatically in the darkest of dark scenes. For the most part all my images came out softer and noisier than I’d expect for a high-end handset.

There aren’t many mid-rangers that put in a clearly superior performance, but you’ll absolutely get better results from other brands when spending this kind of cash.

The only hardware change I can see between generations is to the selfie camera, which has a wider field of view than the Galaxy S25’s one. The sensor is unchanged, though. It’s a great performer overall, having effective autofocus and coping well in most lightning conditions.

Video recording could still be a reason to pick the Galaxy S26 over the equivalent Google Pixel. Samsung has expanded an already chunky feature set with pre-loaded LUTs to give your footage a bit more sparkle, greater control over focus and exposure in the Pro mode, and a Horizon Lock mode that can do a convincing impression of an action camera (as long as you don’t mind capping out at 1440p).

Software experience: more of the same

Have you used a Samsung phone in the last few years? Then OneUI 8.5 will feel very familiar indeed. Icons, fonts and menus have all been carried over from the previous generation, as has the ever-growing list of features that live under the Galaxy AI umbrella. It’s as overwhelming as ever for anyone coming from a more pared-back version of Android. Defaulting to onscreen navigation buttons rather than gestures also feels out of step with what every other phone brand is doing.

The big new addition is Now Nudge, which is sort of Samsung’s take on the Magic Cue prompts seen on the latest Google Pixel generation. It’s meant to infer context from your incoming text messages and suggest useful info like event locations, calendar entries and the like – but in my time with the phone it never flashed up anything I found especially handy. Being fully onboard with Samsung’s Messages and Calendar apps will help – preferring Whatsapp and Google Calendar probably won’t.

I was a bigger fan of Call Screening, which forwards incoming phone calls from unknown numbers to a virtual chatbot. It transcribes what’s said on the fly and you can type messages to the chatbot if you need more information. It saved me a bunch of times after I’d put my contact details into an estate agent’s online form. It’s honestly the first bit of Galaxy AI I’d genuinely consider paying for.

Being able to generatively create sticker sets from photos, summarise web pages or use AI to reformat written text still feels more gimmick than anything. Giving the Bixby voice assistant natural language statements like “the onscreen text is too small” and being taken to the relevant settings screen could be handy for less tech-savvy owners, at least.

Samsung continues to lead the way, alongside Google, when it comes to long-term software support. The Galaxy S26 is due seven new Android generations and seven years of security updates.

Performance & battery life: second class citizen

After Qualcomm made an appearance in every Galaxy variant last year, it was a bit of a surprise to see Samsung return to its old two-tier approach. For 2026 certain markets (like the US and Japan) will find a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset powering their new phone, while Europeans get Exynos 2600 silicon instead. Everyone gets 12GB of RAM as standard and storage starts at 256GB, with the old 128GB variant having been put out to pasture.

Samsung’s latest in-house chip is the first of its kind built on a 2nm process, which should make it a lot more power efficient than the previous generation. Low-power cores have also been jettisoned in favour of ten higher-powered ones. The firm reckons performance gains over the last-gen chip could be as high as 39%; based on my testing that’s on the money for multi-core performance, with synthetic tests showing a healthy uplift over the Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered Galaxy S25. It wasn’t far off the S26 Ultra here either.

Single-core performance is a different story, barely being any better than last year. Samsung’s NPU is also well off the pace of Qualcomm’s according to the Geekbench AI test. While graphics benchmarks are slightly closer, Europeans are definitely getting an inferior experience in terms of raw output – though I expect the majority of Galaxy S26 customers aren’t that bothered by specs enough to consider spending their money elsewhere.

That said, you won’t notice in everyday use. This is still comfortably a high-end chipset, with enough oomph to make Samsung’s take on Android feel as speedy as you’d hope given the price. Games default to high details for the most part, multitasking was a smooth experience, and sustained heavy use doesn’t throttle things to a significant degree.

The regular S26 is the only one of Samsung’s three new Galaxy models to get a battery increase for 2026. It’s a modest bump, though: 4300mAh isn’t even 10% more than you got on the outgoing Galaxy S25. The the Xiaomi 17 is simply leagues ahead for raw capacity, and that translates into a healthy lifespan advantage.

Software optimisations and a more efficient chipset help a bit, meaning this phone does at least last longer than the outgoing Galaxy S25 – but not by a lot. It’s enough to draw level with the iPhone 17 Pro, but in my experience this is very much a charge-every-day phone. Anything beyond moderate use would see it drained it by early evening. If you’re used to that having come from a previous Galaxy phone it may not be a big deal, but the simple fact is rivals now last much longer.

Charging speeds remain disappointingly low too, even if some behind-the-scenes tweaking means top ups are slightly ahead of the outgoing Galaxy S25. A modest 25W over USB-C leaves the Galaxy S26 at the bottom of the pile, and built-in Qi2 magnetic charging still doesn’t make the grade. You’re instead relying on magnet-lined cases for another Galaxy generation, while Google streaks ahead with integrated PixelSnap support.

Samsung Galaxy S26 verdict

Depending on where you live in the world, the Galaxy S26 will either be an obvious compact Android pick or something of an also-ran. US shoppers must essentially pick between this or the Google Pixel 10 Pro, and aren’t saddled with an inferior chipset. While Samsung has closed the gap with this year’s Exynos silicon, European buyers are still getting the lesser device.

The rest of the world is also much better served for smaller screen flagships. The Xiaomi 17 has Samsung embarrassed on battery life and has a superior rear camera setup, while China and India have the upcoming OnePlus 15T to look forward to.

This is still a powerful handset with consistent cameras and day-long battery life – just about. It looks the part and has a stunning screen. I also can’t argue that Samsung’s Android interface is as fully-featured as they come. But it’s being left behind on multiple fronts by the competition, while asking for more of your cash than ever.

If OneUI on a smaller screen is a must, you’ll definitely want to hold out for a discounted network carrier contract deal.

Samsung Galaxy S26 technical specifications