Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, my honest opinion 90 days in

I bought the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra on the 11th of March 2026, the day it went on sale in the UK after Samsung Galaxy Unpacked on the 25th of February. I have been carrying it as my daily for ninety days. Real photos, real benchmarks against my iPhone 17 Pro Max, three OTA updates, and the One UI 9.0 beta that landed last week. This is the writeup.

The verdict, up front#

The S26 Ultra is better than the launch reviews suggested. The One UI 9.0 beta makes it the most confident Android flagship I have ever used. It is not perfect. The price still stings, the 100x zoom is still a parlour trick most days. The camera versatility, the multi core CPU lead, and the new Privacy Display are the trio I notice every day rather than only in spec sheets.

If you are choosing between this and the iPhone 17 Pro Max in mid 2026 and you are not already locked into iMessage and AirDrop, the S26 Ultra is the more interesting phone. Multi core performance has flipped Samsung's way for the first time in three generations. The cameras pull ahead in versatility. One UI 9.0 has done what Samsung skins rarely do, it has gone quiet and got out of the way.

A note on the benchmark numbers#

I want to be honest about what the chart shows. The iPhone 17 Pro Max wins single core. Apple's A19 Pro hits 3,871 in Geekbench 6 single core, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in the S26 Ultra hits about 3,818. A19 Pro wins by roughly one percent, a margin you will never actually feel in daily use.

Multi core is where the story flips. The S26 Ultra hits 11,214 to the iPhone's 9,968, a 12.5 percent lead and the largest Samsung has had over an iPhone flagship in years. You feel it anywhere the chip stretches across multiple cores. Long compile jobs, on device video transcode, sustained gaming. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy runs two 4.74 GHz prime cores plus six 3.63 GHz performance cores, and Samsung has clocked the Galaxy variant slightly higher than the stock Snapdragon part.

So the chip is mixed. Single threaded snappiness goes to the iPhone. Multi threaded heavy lifting goes to Samsung.

Why I bought one in the first place#

I did not need a new phone. The iPhone 17 Pro Max I had been carrying since the 19th of September 2025 was perfectly fine. I wanted to test something honestly. I have written here before about the iPhone 17 Pro Max, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, the S24 Ultra, and the S25 Ultra. Every time I have come away saying Samsung is close but not quite. The S26 Ultra was supposed to be the year that flipped.

I pre ordered it on the 25th of February at Galaxy Unpacked, had it in my hand on the 11th of March, and started living with it instead of writing a launch review.

This is the writeup of the last ninety days.

Shot on the S26 Ultra#

That frame is what the camera does without you trying. Auto mode, one tap. No portrait mode trick, no AI cleanup, no Adobe pass. The 200 MP main sensor with a wider f/1.4 aperture is doing real work, the falloff behind the subject is the f/1.4 aperture, and the pixel binning produces sharp 12 MP files that hold up at 100 percent crop on a 4K display.

Samsung went wider on the aperture. f/1.4 on the S26 Ultra vs f/1.7 on both the S25 Ultra and the S24 Ultra. That is roughly double the light gathering at the same shutter speed. Indoors at dusk, that is the difference between an ISO 800 frame and a clean ISO 400 one.

I have shot roughly four hundred frames on the S26 Ultra in three months. Observations.

• The 200 MP main sensor is the headline upgrade. Wider f/1.4 is genuinely useful at dusk and indoors. Binned 12 MP files hold up on a 4K display.
• The dual telephoto system is the right call. A 10 MP 3x portrait optic plus a 50 MP 5x periscope at f/2.9 (was f/3.4 on the S25 Ultra) means you have a usable focal length almost everywhere. The 5x is sharper and brighter than last year.
• The 100x Space Zoom is still mostly novelty. I have used it twice in three months, both times for the bit. The 30x output is the practical ceiling.
• The iPhone has no dedicated 3x optic. It relies on a 5x periscope tetraprism for everything past the main sensor. For tighter portraits at conversational distances, the S26 Ultra has the easier path.

Performance, sustained vs burst#

In ordinary use the chip differences vanish. Both phones launch apps instantly. Both stream 4K without breaking a sweat. The differences show up in two places.

Sustained. Build a small Next.js project on Termux. Transcode a ten minute 4K clip. Run Genshin for thirty minutes. The S26 Ultra holds its multi core lead because the thermal envelope is more generous, the chassis is thinner than the iPhone (7.9 mm vs 8.75 mm), and Samsung has tuned the vapour chamber to push more heat out before throttling.

Burst. The iPhone wins anything that hits the prime core for a fraction of a second. App opens, single tap web reads, low light shutter release latency. A19 Pro single core at 3,871 is genuinely impressive, and Apple's memory subsystem keeps it fed.

Net. If you compile or transcode on your phone, the S26 Ultra is the better tool. If you mostly read, message, and shoot, the chip difference is invisible.

Battery, closer than the spec sheet suggests#

The S26 Ultra ships with a 4,855 mAh cell. The iPhone 17 Pro Max ships with 4,823 mAh. Functionally identical capacity, which surprised me. I had expected the Samsung to pull ahead on raw mAh and it does not.

Where the S26 Ultra pulls ahead is charging. Samsung Super Fast Charging 3.0 at 60W wired, up from 45W on the S25 Ultra. Samsung quotes 75 percent in around thirty minutes on the wired brick. The iPhone 17 Pro Max tops out at 40W wired. Both phones charge wireless at 25W, the iPhone over MagSafe and the S26 over Qi2.

The gap I noticed most was the speed at which I could top up over lunch. Twenty minutes plugged in at a cafe gets the S26 Ultra to a comfortable 60 something percent. The iPhone needs closer to thirty minutes for the same result.

One UI 9.0 beta, the surprise inside the surprise#

This is the section I did not expect to write.

Samsung's One UI has historically been the slightly too busy skin you tolerated because the hardware was good. The 9.0 beta that landed last week, based on Android 16, has done something I did not think Samsung would do. It went quiet.

The new home screen has fewer hard edges. The notification stack handles batched alerts the way Android should have ten years ago. The bundled Samsung apps have stopped insisting on their own duplicates of Google's. The settings tree has been thinned. Bixby has been demoted into a context only assistant rather than a press and hold takeover. Gemini handles the assistant work and Samsung's services that overlap with Google's now politely defer.

The change I notice most often is the app continuity layer. Apps resume their state across reboots in a way that genuinely feels like the system remembers what you were doing. Open Drafts, write half a note, force restart the phone, come back. The note is right where you left it.

The Privacy Display is the launch headline and it is real. From a 35 to 40 degree side angle the screen blanks down to about 20 percent brightness for the off axis viewer while staying full bright for the head on user. I have used it on the train every day for ninety days and it is the kind of small thing that adds up.

The honest comparison with the iPhone 17 Pro Max#

This is the table where I cannot pretend to be impartial. I write code for a living and I have not actually needed iMessage in five years because everyone I talk to is on WhatsApp or Signal. If you are an iMessage and AirDrop family, none of what I am about to say will move you, and that is fine.

For me, three things tilt the S26 Ultra over.

1. Multi core CPU and sustained performance. The 12.5 percent Geekbench multi core lead is real and you feel it on long tasks.
2. Camera versatility. A 200 MP main with f/1.4, a 10 MP 3x portrait, a 50 MP 5x periscope, and a 50 MP ultrawide is the most complete focal range Samsung has shipped. It solves the I do not have the right lens problem better than the iPhone tetraprism alone does.
3. The Privacy Display. First in the world, and the kind of feature I would not have asked for that I now miss when I pick up another phone.

Three things keep the iPhone ahead for some buyers.

1. Single core CPU. A19 Pro wins bursty interactions by a small margin.
2. iMessage, AirDrop, and the MagSafe ecosystem. Still real factors for many families.
3. The 80 pound saving on the same screen size. The iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at £1,199. The S26 Ultra starts at £1,279.

What is not great#

I am not going to pretend this phone is flawless. Three things rankle.

• The price. £1,279 is a lot. The S20 Ultra entry was £1,199 in 2020. Real terms price has crept up roughly 80 pounds in six years, which is not catastrophic but is noticeable.
• The 100x zoom in the marketing. The same parlour trick it was on the S24 Ultra and the S25 Ultra. The 30x is the real practical ceiling.
• The fingerprint sensor. Still ultrasonic, still slightly slower than the iPhone's Face ID, and Samsung has not added a face unlock secure enough for banking. I want both.

The verdict, again, with conviction#

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is the phone I would tell a senior engineer to buy in 2026 if they are not already inside the Apple ecosystem.

The chip leads Apple on multi core for the first time in three generations. The cameras are the most versatile flagship system shipped this year. The chassis is thinner and lighter than the iPhone at the same screen size. The One UI 9.0 beta has quietened a skin that used to fight the user. The Privacy Display is the kind of small daily use win that does not make the headline but does make the phone.

If you want the most complete Android flagship in 2026, this is the one. If you are in the iPhone ecosystem and your family has iMessage, stay on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The 80 pound difference is not the deciding factor either way.

For my money, ninety days in, the S26 Ultra is the first Samsung flagship I would recommend over the equivalent iPhone without major caveats. That is not a sentence I expected to write.

Sources are at the bottom of this page. I bought the phone with my own money. No affiliate links anywhere on this site.