The Galaxy S Ultra line has long been Samsung’s “everything, everywhere, all at once” answer to the question of what an Android flagship should be. For 2026, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra doubles down on that brief: a titanium chassis that finally feels properly refined, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 for Galaxy chip that’s faster than anything else on shelves in Australia, a 200MP main camera with a redesigned 5x periscope, and a Galaxy AI suite that has actually started landing in AU in a meaningful way. It also asks $2,149 of you at the entry tier, which is real money in 2026.
Em has been carrying the S26 Ultra as her daily driver for just over a month, swapping out of an iPhone 17 Pro and a Pixel 11 Pro along the way. Our team has been kicking the tyres across Sydney glare, Melbourne drizzle and a long weekend on the Mid North Coast, with Josh from the PC desk running the synthetic numbers and Priya benchmarking the on-device AI features. Here’s where Em, and the rest of our team, landed.
Design and build: titanium, finally done properly
Samsung’s titanium frame debuted on the S24 Ultra, but on the S26 Ultra it feels like the design brief finally caught up to the material. The rails are flatter, the corners less sharply chamfered, and the matte back glass has a fine sandblasted finish that doesn’t immediately turn into a fingerprint diary. Em’s review unit is the new Titanium Bushland colourway, a muted khaki-green that suits an Australian audience better than the global “Titanium Silverblue” hero shot suggests.
It is, however, still a big phone. At 232g with a 6.9-inch display, the S26 Ultra is not pocket-friendly in board shorts, and the squared-off corners can dig into your palm during long reading sessions. If you’ve been holding off because the Ultra line felt like a brick, this generation is marginally better balanced, but it’s still firmly in the “two-hand phone” category.
- Dimensions: 162.8 x 77.6 x 8.2 mm, 232g
- Frame: Grade 5 titanium, Gorilla Armor 2 front and back
- IP rating: IP68, with Samsung quoting improved saltwater resilience
- S Pen: Still housed in the chassis (more on that below)
Display: built for Aussie sun
The 6.9-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel is, frankly, the best display we’ve used on any phone in 2026. Samsung is quoting a peak of 3,000 nits, and out in genuinely punishing Bondi midday sun the S26 Ultra stayed readable in a way the Pixel 11 Pro simply doesn’t. The new anti-reflective layer also makes a real difference when you’re reading a long article under fluoros at the office.
Adaptive refresh runs 1–120Hz, and we measured noticeably less battery drain at idle than the S25 Ultra, presumably from the more aggressive LTPO behaviour. If you watch a lot of video on the train, the HDR10+ tone mapping has been tweaked and skin tones look less waxy in Netflix content than last generation.
Performance: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 for Galaxy
Australian S26 Ultras ship with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 for Galaxy globally — no Exynos split this year, thankfully. Josh’s bench runs put it roughly 18% ahead of the standard 8 Elite Gen 2 on sustained GPU workloads, and about 22% ahead of the S25 Ultra on multi-core CPU tasks. In practice, that means Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves hold 60fps at high settings without the chassis becoming uncomfortably warm, which is a meaningful upgrade.
RAM starts at 12GB on the 256GB model and steps up to 16GB on the 512GB and 1TB SKUs. If you’re planning to lean on Galaxy AI, the 16GB tier is genuinely worth the extra spend — on-device models load and stay resident noticeably more often.
Cameras: 200MP, but the periscope is the star
The headline is the 200MP main sensor, but the more interesting story is the redesigned 5x optical periscope, which now uses a larger 1/2.5″ sensor with a wider f/2.9 aperture. Low-light reach has visibly improved — shooting the harbour from Mrs Macquarie’s Chair at dusk, the S26 Ultra pulled detail from the Opera House sails that the iPhone 17 Pro’s 5x simply couldn’t.
- Main: 200MP, f/1.7, 1/1.3″ sensor, OIS
- Ultrawide: 50MP, f/1.9, 120° field of view
- 3x telephoto: 10MP, f/2.4, OIS
- 5x periscope: 50MP, f/2.9, OIS, up to 100x “Space Zoom”
- Selfie: 12MP, f/2.2, dual-pixel AF
Space Zoom past about 30x is still mostly a party trick, but the 10x–20x range is now genuinely usable for things like reading a menu board across a food court or grabbing a bird in a gum tree. Video tops out at 8K/30 and 4K/120 with strong stabilisation; we’d happily shoot a wedding b-roll on this phone. If you want our broader thinking on what makes a phone camera worth caring about, our earlier feature on what makes mobile phones the coolest gadgets still holds up.
S Pen: still the Ultra’s secret weapon
Samsung quietly dropped Bluetooth from the S Pen last generation, and that’s still the case here — no air gestures, no remote shutter. For most of our team, that’s fine; we use the S Pen for handwritten notes in meetings, quick photo markup, and the surprisingly good Note Assist summarisation. Em’s verdict is that the S Pen is the single feature that keeps her on the Ultra line rather than switching to a Pixel: nothing else on the Australian market does inked notes this well.
Galaxy AI in Australia: actually useful now
Galaxy AI launched a little thinly in AU back on the S24, but the rollout has matured. On the S26 Ultra, we’ve been using:
- Live Translate: Real-time phone-call translation now supports Australian English as a source language properly, not just US English. Priya tested it on calls to family in Hindi and Tamil with strong results.
- Note Assist: Summarises long handwritten or voice notes, and now generates action-item lists. Genuinely useful for editorial meetings.
- Generative Photo Editing: Object removal and reposition is faster and produces fewer obvious artefacts than the S25 Ultra. It still watermarks AI-edited images, which we think is the right call.
- Circle to Search: Still the best implementation on any phone.
A note on data: most of these features run a hybrid of on-device and cloud processing. Samsung has been clearer this generation about which features send data off-device, but if you’re privacy-sensitive it’s worth reading the consumer-rights guidance the ACCC publishes on AI-enabled consumer products before opting into everything.
Battery and charging
The 5,000mAh battery is unchanged on paper, but real-world endurance is meaningfully better thanks to the new chip and panel. On Em’s typical day — heavy camera use, a couple of hours of streaming, Slack and email all day — the S26 Ultra finished with 28–35% in the tank. Heavy gaming days dropped that to about 12%, which is still respectable for a phone this powerful.
Wired charging is 45W, which is competitive but not class-leading; a 0–100% top-up takes about 65 minutes with a compatible PD-PPS charger. Wireless is 15W Qi2 with magnetic alignment (finally). If you want to stretch every cycle further, our explainer on how to make your smartphone battery last longer applies neatly here.
Connectivity and carrier support in Australia
The S26 Ultra supports all the bands you’ll need on Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, including n78 5G mid-band and the newer n28 700MHz 5G that the big three have been rolling out in regional Australia. mmWave (n258) is included on AU stock this year, which is largely future-proofing — there’s very limited deployment so far, and you can check the ACMA spectrum register if you want to see what’s actually licensed in your area.
Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, UWB and an upgraded ultrasonic in-display fingerprint reader round things out. eSIM and physical SIM both work; dual-eSIM is supported for the first time on an Australian Ultra.
The case against the S26 Ultra
It is not a phone without compromises. Our team’s honest list:
- Size and weight: 232g is a lot. If you’ve got smaller hands, the S26+ is the smarter buy.
- Price: $2,149 for 256GB, $2,399 for 512GB, $2,799 for 1TB. JB Hi-Fi and Samsung AU are both running trade-in bonuses at launch, but sticker price is sticker price.
- 45W charging: Fine, but Chinese flagships are doing 80–120W now.
- One UI bloat: Still ships with duplicated Samsung/Google apps. Disable what you don’t need.
- S Pen Bluetooth gone: Photographers who used the remote shutter will miss it.
How it compares to iPhone 17 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro
If you’re cross-shopping at this tier, here’s our quick read. The iPhone 17 Pro is the better video camera and the better choice if your family is locked into iMessage and FaceTime, but it doesn’t have anything close to the S Pen and its 5x zoom is materially weaker. The Pixel 11 Pro has the most natural-looking photos straight out of camera and the cleanest software experience, but its sustained performance lags and the display isn’t as bright. If you’re feeling nostalgic about a different camera-led era, Em recommends a read of our throwback photographer’s review of the Nokia Lumia 930 — the lineage from “phone as serious camera” to today’s Ultra is clearer than you’d think.
For Android-first buyers who want the most capable phone they can put in an Australian pocket, the S26 Ultra is still the one.
Pricing, warranty and Samsung Care+ in Australia
- 256GB: $2,149 (Samsung AU / JB Hi-Fi)
- 512GB: $2,399
- 1TB: $2,799
- Samsung Care+: from $19.95/month, covers accidental damage and theft
- Update commitment: 7 years of OS and security updates, matching Google’s Pixel commitment
That 7-year update window genuinely changes the maths on a $2,149 phone. Amortised over the support window, you’re paying about $25/month for the most capable Android phone on the market — which is a much easier sell than the upfront sticker suggests.
Final thoughts
Em’s verdict, after a month of real use: the Galaxy S26 Ultra is still the Android flagship to beat. It’s not a revolution over the S25 Ultra, and if you upgraded last year there’s no urgent reason to do it again. But if you’re on an S22 Ultra, an older Note, or you’re a long-time iPhone user finally curious about what the other side looks like, this is the most polished, most capable big-screen Android phone we’ve reviewed.
It’s heavy, it’s expensive, and it’s not subtle — but for the right buyer, the S26 Ultra is exactly the phone it sets out to be. Our team’s collective recommendation: if you want the best Android phone money can buy in Australia in 2026, and you can stomach the size and the price, this is it. If either of those is a dealbreaker, the S26+ or a Pixel 11 Pro will serve you better. Dale, our editor, has already put his pre-order in. That’s probably all you need to know.
