Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Malaysia review: Good wine needs no bush
Year after year, Samsung’s Ultra series has become the benchmark for what a no-compromise Android flagship should look like. By now, the formula is familiar: cutting-edge hardware, a feature-packed camera system, and refinements that build steadily on what already works. With the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Samsung isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel but rather polishing till shines, with a couple of added features and improvements focused on privacy, camera and the like.
That’s where the saying “good wine needs no bush” feels especially fitting. The Galaxy S26 Ultra arrives with the quiet confidence of a device that already knows its place at the top of the Android food chain. After spending some time with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, here’s our take on whether Samsung’s latest Ultra flagship still deserves its crown.
Sleeker still
The Galaxy S26 Ultra might be their sleekest looking Ultra yet, with its violet colourway and more rounded corners along with an overall thinner side profile. The S26 Ultra is now just 7.9mm thin, compared to the 8.2mm and 8.6mm of the Galaxy S25 Ultra and S24 Ultra, and impressively is just 214g in weight, compared to the 218g and 232g of its last two predecessors. Curiously, this is after going back to an aluminum frame, having followed Apple with its titanium experiment on the last two Ultras.
That’s actually quite impressive, considering that historical precedent has always placed the Ultra as one of those chunky smartphones at the heavier end of the scale; for context, the iPhone 17 Pro Max weighs in at 233g, which means the large Galaxy S26 Ultra is actually closer in weight to the regular iPhone 17 Pro that weighs 206g.
Overall, this leads to a very nice feel in the hand, thanks to the slimmer chassis and more rounded corners. However, the switch back to an aluminum frame could be seen as a slight downgrade of course if you’re into more premium materials, and the camera bump does make the phone wobble a little more aggressively when on the table. But if we’re being honest I do think the feel of the phone in the hand matters a bit more, so props to Samsung for focusing on this aspect.
Privacy Display is more than a gimmick
Moving on to the display, you’re getting a 6.9-inch Dynanic AMOLED 2X display pushing a QHD+ resolution, an adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate, a peak brightness of 2600nits and HDR10+ support. This uber large screen means that using the phone is actually quite an experience, with doomscrolling, watching content—especially HDR content—and even just texting and typing a very nice experience when combined with its pretty good pair of stereo speakers.
We can’t ignore the elephant in the room though with its display, which is the Privacy Display feature. This is basically a hardware solution that makes your screen harder to see at off angles, keeping your display safe from prying eyes when in public places like on a bus or when standing in a queue.
In practice, it works almost as expected. It’s true that at off angles trying to see the screen is a little harder, but if you’re sitting down on the MRT, someone standing can still see your screen and mostly make out what you have on it even with Privacy Display turned on. If you really need complete privacy—maybe you’re in your bank app or discussing something under NDA—then what you’ll really want to turn on is the Maximum Privacy setting. The drawback with Maximum Privacy though is that it really hurts the colour reproduction; blacks turn grey and everything just looks a little flat.
Nevertheless, for daily use I’ve found that the best way to use Privacy Display is by using the conditional setting. By default, it only applies the Privacy Display to your notifications and your lock screen, but you can also set it so that it’ll kick in when you’re using certain apps too, such as banking and eWallet apps.
Moving on to performance, the Galaxy S26 Ultra comes with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy system-on-chip, with our unit coming with 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage, though you can also get it with 512GB of storage or the top end model with 16GB of memory and 1TB of storage. That chipset is basically a higher binned processor with higher clock speeds, which offers a very slight performance bump over the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
Considering how high end the hardware is here, it’s unsurprising to hear then that it handles everything but the kitchen sink thrown at it. Plenty of Chrome tabs, multiple apps in the background, music and video streaming, chat apps, games; there isn’t much that won’t run fine on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Even heavy titles like Zenless Zone Zero and Where Winds Meet will run at a solid 60fps at decently high settings. As for battery life, the Galaxy S26 Ultra offers dependable use, with close to a day and a half of use at automatic brightness; you’ll just need to get your own USB-PD charger.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra comes with Android 16, skinned with their own One UI 8.5 over it, and for most people it’s a safe, reliable UI that does exactly what it says with a mostly intuitive layout. There’s a lot of AI features added onto the base UI of course, with one such extra being the new Bixby. It’s fine for the most part, able to better understand contextual searches when I’m in settings for example, but I’m not sure if I’m replacing the long press shortcut’s Google and its Circle to Search function with Bixby anytime soon.
What I do love though is the seven-year guarantee of software support, meaning that you could ostensibly use the Galaxy S26 Ultra till 2033 and still get whatever the latest version of One UI is called by then, along with crucial security updates.
Easy point-and-shoot cameras
Alright so first let’s talk about what the Galaxy S26 Ultra offers with its camera setup. You’re looking at a 200MP, f/1.4 main shooter using the Samsung ISOCELL HP2 1/1.3″ sensor, flanked by a 10MP, f/2.4 10x telephoto, a 50MP, f/2.9 5x telephoto and an ultrawide 50MP, f/1.9, while a 12MP, f/2.2 front camera rounds things off.
As for how it shoots, the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s main camera is excellent. You’ll be able to capture a great amount of detail, with fantastic dynamic range especially in good lighting conditions as well as when it’s night time, while colours are much more natural now, especially compared to Android rivals that tend to boost saturations up. Compared to its own predecessor, it’s not much of an improvement albeit the S25 Ultra was already a decent shot in its own right, but for anyone switching over from an older Galaxy this might be a much larger jump in performance.
As for the other cameras, the 3x telephoto is perhaps the weaker of the two compared to the 5x telephoto, with an ever so slightly noisier, grainer shot. It’s not bad by any means; the bar is just that high for the S26 Ultra really. Both telephotos still offer some of the better shots I’ve seen for smartphone telephoto shooters with good colour reproduction and lighting, while the ultrawide is perfectly solid too. Portrait modes also get you a very nice bokeh that doesn’t look artificial, maybe even one of the better ones around.
Overall, I found that taking shots with the main, ultrawide or punching in with the telephoto cameras often result in solid, quality photos that are perfectly fine for sharing with others or posting on social media. While I’m not sure it has the absolute best camera on a smartphone, it’s certainly one of the more balanced setups, where every one of its shooters offers a decent shot that honestly most people will be happy with. And if you need to shoot video with it, the Galaxy S26 Ultra also has some of the best video capabilities in the Android scene, thanks in part to stabilisation features and a fleshed out Pro mode.
Still the Android king
Suffice to say, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra stands out in a sea of flagship Android smartphones as one of its best. With outstanding performance, solid battery life and great cameras on top of a gorgeous display and understated design, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is a fine choice for anyone looking for the best Android has to offer.
The only thing I think that makes tough to recommend is honestly its price. Starting at RM5,999 for the base model with 256GB of storage and rising to RM7,999 for the top end model, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is a pricey flagship which ultimately hampers its allure. Competitors such as Xiaomi, Honor and even Google themselves offer plenty of top notch flagships these days, and it’s hard to not at least take a look at the cheaper options around.
Nevertheless, if you’re willing to cough up the money, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra will almost certainly not disappoint.
