Samsung officially released the Galaxy S26 series today. The basic Galaxy S26 brings a larger 6.3-inch screen and a 4300mAh battery, while the Galaxy S26+ has not changed much at the hardware level. More upgrades focus on chip performance and a series of AI functions for the "intelligent agent era".
In terms of chips, Galaxy S26 and S26+ will be equipped with Exynos 2600 in most regions except North America, China and Japan. Only the above three major markets will provide exclusive Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy versions. Officials claim that compared with the previous generation S25 series, the new platform brings approximately 19% CPU performance improvement, 24% GPU performance improvement, and 39% NPU performance improvement. Exynos and Snapdragon versions have similar improvements in AI tasks. In terms of actual experience, the voice command processing speed is doubled, and the time required for operations such as call transcription and AI erasure is halved.
The Galaxy S26 continues the style of the previous generation in terms of body design, but the screen has slightly increased from 6.2 inches to 6.3 inches. It is still a 1080p+ resolution, 1–120Hz variable refresh LTPO OLED panel. The battery capacity increased from 4,000mAh to 4,300mAh, while the body size remained basically the same at 149.6×71.7×7.2mm, and the weight increased slightly to 167g. In terms of storage, the S26 has canceled the 128GB entry version. The entire series starts at 256GB and provides 512GB options. The memory is unified at 12GB.
The changes in appearance and specifications of the Galaxy S26+ are more conservative: it is still equipped with a 6.7-inch 1440p+ LTPO display with the same refresh rate of 1–120Hz, the body size and weight are exactly the same as the S25+, and the battery is still 4,900mAh. The charging part is different from the Ultra version: the S26 Ultra has been upgraded to 60W wired and 25W wireless fast charging, while the S26+'s wired charging is still 45W, and the wireless charging is only slightly increased from 15W to 20W; the basic S26 continues to use 25W wired and 15W wireless configurations, with no changes.
In terms of imaging, the Galaxy S26 and S26+ continue to use the three-camera combination of the previous generation, including a 50-megapixel main camera (1.0µm pixels, f/1.8 aperture, OIS optical image stabilization), a 10-megapixel 3x telephoto (1.0µm pixels), and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide angle (1.4µm pixels, f/2.2 aperture). Although the hardware has not been updated, Samsung has introduced a number of AI functions for the camera, such as Auto Framing, which can intelligently crop in real time when recording 8K video and output a 4K picture with better composition. In addition, the new Super Steady Video supports 360° horizontal locking, simulating the "horizontally stable" effect of an action camera; for selfies, it uses an enhanced version of AI ISP and Object-Aware Engine to achieve more intelligent subject recognition and picture optimization.
For a global experience, the Galaxy S26 series is defined as a product "built for the future of intelligent agent-based AI", deeply integrating many AI functions into the system. For example, the Now Nudge function can proactively remind users of previous appointments when they are chatting with friends and planning their itinerary, and automatically retrieve relevant photos for sharing. The new version of "Brief on the S26" is powered by the Personal Data Engine, which extracts key information from notifications, messages and emails to automatically identify and organize users' schedules, even if they have never been manually added to the calendar.
In terms of content management, the latest One UI will automatically classify and manage screenshots into eight categories including shopping, social media, coupons, boarding passes, events, locations, barcodes and QR codes, and chat. The built-in document scanning function has also been enhanced, not only supporting text recognition, but also retaining the layout and images of the original document to generate more complete electronic documents. In terms of call harassment prevention, the new Call Screening function is similar to a smart "call filter": it can automatically answer calls, identify the caller's identity and the reason for the call, and display the text transcription content in real time.
In terms of audio experience, Samsung has strengthened the Audio Eraser function to address the common problems of "dialogue is too light and explosions are too loud" when watching movies. This function can distinguish human voices from background sounds, weaken environmental noise, and improve dialogue clarity. Although this feature itself has existed before, this time it has been opened to third-party applications such as YouTube, Netflix, and Instagram, and has a wider scope of application.
In terms of color matching and product strategy, all three Galaxy S26 models (including the S26 Ultra) are available in four colors: white, sky blue, cobalt purple and black to enhance the brand recognition of the series. The Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ will officially go on sale on March 11, and pre-orders will begin today. In terms of price, the official price of the Galaxy S26 12GB+256GB version in the European market is 1,000 euros, and the 12GB+512GB version is 1,200 euros; the Galaxy S26+ 12GB+256GB is priced at 1,250 euros, and the 12GB+512GB version is 1,450 euros. Compared with last year's S25 series, the prices of the standard and Plus versions have increased to varying degrees, while the entry price of Ultra has been slightly lowered, while the price of high-end models has been increased.