Samsung just unveiled the Galaxy S26 series and let’s just say that the software team had a busy year, while the hardware team didn’t get much done. Okay, that’s not true – the S26 Ultra brings some cool upgrades. However, you can read about them in our other article. Here we will focus on the vanilla and plus models.
First, let’s rip the band-aid off – the Galaxy S26 and S26+ will use the Exynos 2600 in all regions except North America, China and Japan. Those regions will get phones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy instead.
Samsung Galaxy S26
While we’re on the topic of compute, the Samsung Galaxy S26 now has 256GB as its base storage option – 128GB is a thing of the past. It and the plus model also have 512GB storage options, but RAM capacity is locked at 12GB.
The S26 comes with an increased screen size to 6.3” diagonal (up from 6.2”). It’s still a 1080p+ LTPO OLED panel (1-120Hz) like before.
The vanilla model also gets a battery upgrade and now has 4,300mAh capacity (up from 4,000mAh). The phone has almost the same dimensions as its predecessor as it measures 149.6 x 71.7 x 7.2mm and weighs 167g (5g more).
The Samsung Galaxy S26+ remains the same size – it has a 6.7” display (1440p+, 1-120Hz LTPO), the exact same dimensions and weight as the S25+, the same 4,900mAh battery too.
Samsung upgraded the S26 Ultra charging system to 60W wired and 25W wireless, up from 45W/15W. The Galaxy S26+ gets a small bump to its wireless charging to 20W (up from 15W), while wired remains at 45W. All that the Galaxy S26 gets is a “good luck” as it is pushed out on the market with the same 25W wired and 15W wireless charging as before.
The S26 and S26+ share the same triple camera setup – the same as last year that is. It includes a 50MP main (1.0µm pixels) with an f/1.8 lens with OIS. There is a 10MP telephoto camera (1.0µm pixels) with a 3x lens and a 12MP (1.4µm) ultra-wide with an f/2.2 lens.
All three Galaxy S26 models will be available in the same four colors for consistent branding: White, Sky Blue, Cobalt Violet and Black.
Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26+ color options
Okay, let’s circle back to the chipset. Samsung is promising a 19% boost to CPU performance, a 24% increase in GPU performance and a 39% faster NPU for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy (compared to the S25 series) and similar increases for the Exynos 2600-equipped models, especially when it comes to AI tasks.
How will that affect your experience? For starters, voice commands are processed twice as fast. Similarly, tasks like transcribing voice calls and using the AI Eraser take half as long.
The Galaxy S26 series is built for the agentic AI future and features a variety of smart features throughout the interface. Now Nudge, for example, will remind you of previous commitments while you chat with friends and make plans to meet up. It can also bring up relevant photos that you can send to your friends and family.
Now Brief on the S26 series is now powered by the Personal Data Engine. This pulls info from notifications, messages and emails and can figure out your appointments, even if you didn’t manually add them to your calendar.
Samsung Galaxy S26+
If you take screenshots of important things, the latest One UI will help you keep them organized as it automatically sorts them into eight categories: Shopping, Social media, Coupon, Boarding pass, Events, Locations, Barcode + QR code and Chats. There’s also a document scanner that does more than OCR, it will copy formatting and images too for a complete document.
The Call Screening feature is like a spam filter for unwanted calls. It can answer the call, identify who is calling and why and show you an on-screen transcription.
Don’t you hate it when movies have quiet dialog and loud explosions? Audio Eraser can help with that – it can isolate voices and reduce background noise. While the feature itself isn’t new, it is now available to third-party apps like YouTube, Netflix and Instagram.
The cameras got cool new AI features too. For example, Auto Framing uses the phone’s power to crop into 8K footage and automatically output perfectly-framed 4K video – all in real time.
There’s also the Super Steady Video, which offers 360° horizontal lock like you get on action cameras. In short, no matter how you turn the phone, the horizon in the video will remain level. For selfies, there is an enhanced AI ISP with an Object-Aware Engine.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ (S26 Ultra too) will be available from March 11, pre-orders start today. Check out the prices below – for prices for more regions, head over to our pricing breakdown. We’ve included the launch prices of the S25 series from last year for comparison.
And don’t miss our hands-on with the Galaxy S26 and S26+ (and the S26 Ultra too, of course).
| 12GB/256GB | 12GB/512GB | 16GB/1TB | |
| Galaxy S25 | €960 | €1,080 | – |
| Galaxy S26 | €1,000 | €1,200 | – |
|---|---|---|---|
| Galaxy S25+ | €1,170 | €1,290 | – |
| Galaxy S26+ | €1,250 | €1,450 | – |
| Galaxy S25 Ultra | €1,470 | €1,590 | €1,830 |
| Galaxy S26 Ultra | €1,450 | €1,650 | €1,950 |