The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra introduced the Privacy Display feature – it allows parts (or all) of the screen to be switched to a restricted viewing angle mode temporarily. This allows you to read notifications and see other private info but prevents others nearby from taking a peek. As with so many Ultra features, there was a possibility that this would remain exclusive to the Ultra for the foreseeable future.
Apparently not – The Elec reports that all four Galaxy S27 models will have the Privacy Display feature. We had already heard that about the Galaxy S27 Pro, the new addition for 2027, but even the vanilla model will get it, which is a surprise – the vanilla phone is usually the one that misses out on features (e.g. 45W charging, UWB, etc.).
Samsung Electronics was reportedly considering sourcing displays for the vanilla Galaxy S27 from BOE as those would have been cheaper. However, that deal fell through and the phone will use Samsung Display panels instead.
Market research firm SigmaIntel reported that 1 million phones with Privacy Display were shipped in 2025 (these were mostly niche business-oriented devices). The S26 Ultra jump started things in the consumer space and the number of Privacy Display-enabled phones is expected to grow to 21 million this year then to 29 million next year.
Samsung is not the only smartphone maker that is keen on offering a Privacy Display style feature. Various leaks claim that Xiaomi, Honor, Oppo and vivo are working on such features for their upcoming flagships.
This will eventually extend to foldables too, though screen manufacturers still have problems to solve. Privacy Display is a hardware feature that divides the display into two kinds of pixels – one kind has narrow viewing angles and is on all the time, the other has wide viewing angles and it gets blacked out when Privacy Display is enabled. This, however, causes issues with resolution and brightness (which in turn affects power draw).
Source (in Korean)