Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus hands-on: smarter cameras despite no hardware upgrades

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus feel like the sensible siblings in the 2026 lineup. While the S26 Ultra grabs attention with its Privacy Display party trick and quad-camera, the regular models stick to a proven (arguably tired?) formula: clean, slim, premium feeling, and camera hardware that’s essentially unchanged from last year’s Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus.

That might sound a little underwhelming on paper, and out of the gate, these won't be no-brainer upgrades from the S25, but if you're coming from an S22, S23, or S24, the levelled-up AI could make all the difference. Specifically, the entire S26 family gets the brand’s latest AI processing, camera modes including improved night video and horizon locking, auto framing, and more.

Design: familar feeling

If you’ve held a Galaxy S phone recently, you’ll feel right at home with the S26 and S26 Plus. Both keep the same overall look as last year’s models: flat front and back, tidy camera rings, and a minimalist styling.

The big decision is size. The Galaxy S26 is the compact choice, with a 6.3-inch display and a lighter, easier-in-the-pocket build. The Galaxy S26 Plus steps it up with a 6.7-inch screen, a little more heft, and a more immersive feel for watching, gaming, and photo editing. Both feel comfortably premium in the hand without pushing into Ultra or Pro Max territory.

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Slimmer than most flagships, the S26 and S26 Plus are 7.2 and 7.3mm respectively, with both available in six colors: Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, Black and White, plus two online exclusive colours: Silver Shadow and Pink Gold.

Screen: small to big, sharp to sharper

Samsung’s AMOLED screens rarely miss the mark, and that continues here. The Galaxy S26’s 6.3-inch display runs at FHD+ resolution with an adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate, and it still looks crisp and punchy for everyday use, making it great for fans of one-handed use and smaller phones.

The Galaxy S26 Plus is the one that big-screen lovers, gamers and on-the-go movie watchers will prefer. Its 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel is almost Ultra-sized, bumps up to QHD+ resolution, which gives you more fine detail, and takes the crown as the sharpest display of all three S26 phones.

Frustratingly, the headline feature of the series, Privacy Display, is only available on the Ultra, which leaves the S26 and S26 Plus with very few highlights compared to their predecessors.

Camera: AI and aperture upgrades

If you were hoping for a big camera hardware shake-up on the S26 and S26 Plus, this isn’t the year. Samsung has essentially carried over last year’s camera approach, which means you’re getting a triple-camera setup that's competitive without being class-leading.

Both the S26 and S26 Ultra have the same camera mix: a 50MP main camera with a 1/1.56-inch sensor size and an f/1.8 lens, a 12MP ultra-wide with a 1/2.55-inch sensor and an f/2.2 lens, and a 10MP 3x telephoto with a 1/3.94-inch sensor and an f/2.4 aperture.

That 3x module offers the same modest zoom Samsung has used for a while, and it’s also the same 10MP, 1.0-micron pixel 3x unit found on the S26 Ultra. If past-gen Galaxys are anything to go by, it's handy in good light, but the phone will switch out for the primary camera when zooming in low-light scenes.

There are a few software upgrades for the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus cameras. The first is nightography video, which leverages AI to improve lowlight video capture detail, color reproduction, and smoothness. Samsung's also added support for APV video, which unlocks higher-bitrate video capture and takes on Apple's ProRes support on its iPhones. The mode offers either Log or HDR capture, with astronomical file sizes: 10 seconds of Log recording costs around 2GB of storage space. Thankfully, you can capture to external storage.

Interface: OneUI with added AI

Diving into Samsung’s interface, OneUI might as well be called OneAI at this rate. New features aplenty, the S26 series’s Creative Studio can create sticker packs and edit photos using text prompts using gen AI, and the phone also analyzes screenshots and auto-sorts and indexes them, making them searchable and arranged in folders, and Bixby, Samsung’s voice assistant is smarter, acting like a ChatGPT-style LLM that can control your phone settings and pull online information all in one place.

Probably the neatest AI addition is Audio Eraser. We’ve seen it baked into the sound and video recorders, cleaning up audio recorded on phones, but now it works with third-party video apps as well. Whether watching YouTube or Netflix, you can dial out the background crowd during a gig or a football match, and it worked surprisingly well when we tested it.

Power, pricing, and availability

Samsung's S26 and S26 Plus use different chips from the Ultra: the latter gets Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, while the S26 and S26 Plus use Samsung's own Exynos 2600. This is a shift in strategy compared to last year and new chip performance can vary wildly, so we'll have to watch this space to see how Samsung's 2nm 2600 fares.

Both phones ship with 12GB of RAM, with either 256GB or 512GB of storage, with Samsung ditching the 128GB starting capacity, which goes some way to justify the price bump for the base model this year.

Battery-wise, Samsung hasn’t reinvented the wheel with the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus, but the capacities make sense for the two sizes. The Galaxy S26 packs a 4,300mAh battery, while the larger S26 Plus bumps that up to 4,900mAh, giving it more headroom for heavy screen time, gaming, and longer camera sessions. Both support Samsung’s Super Fast Charging 2.0 on the wired side, plus Fast Wireless Charging 2.0, and the Galaxy S26 also keeps Wireless PowerShare for topping up accessories on the go.

The Galaxy S26 starts at $899/£879/AU$1,549 for 256GB and $1,099/£1,049/AU$1,849 for 512GB. The Galaxy S26 Plus starts at $1,099/£1,099/AU$1,849 for 256GB and $1,299/£1,269/AU$2,149 for 512GB. Both are available to pre-order now and go on sale on March 11.

If you want the full Samsung “everything phone,” the Ultra is still the way to go. For a smaller, slimmer, lower-cost alternative with Samsung's AI features and familiar, premium styling, the S26 and S26 Plus could be sensible upgrades even if they don't offer much in the way of new hardware.