Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Review: The Privacy Screen | WIRED

TriangleUp Buy Now Multiple Buying Options Available $1,300 at Amazon $1,300 at Best Buy $1,300 at Samsung Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Rating: 8 /10 Open rating explainer Information WIRED Privacy Display is very useful. Horizon Lock captures super steady video footage. Excellent performance, great battery life, and a reliable quad-camera system. Long software support. TIRED Rocks awfully on a table. No Qi2 magnets. Some AI features are useless. Samsung Keyboard still sucks. Did you privately ask ChatGPT how to bring up nonmonogamy with your husband? It's all over socials! Your commuting neighbor on the train snuck a glance at your phone, guffawed internally, and blasted it on X with a satisfied smirk. At least you're still anonymous. This is a scenario that Samsung's new smartphone avoids. It's rare for a new smartphone hardware innovation to affect so much of our day-to-day experience, but that's exactly what the Privacy Display on the Galaxy S26 Ultra does. Over the last two weeks, I have enjoyed an extra level of comfort knowing that my nosy public transit neighbors and fellow coffee shop lovers have a hard time seeing anything on my screen. Barring the display, this isn't a revolutionary upgrade over the Galaxy S25 Ultra , which wasn't a revolutionary upgrade over the Galaxy S24 Ultra . If you're coming from a flagship Galaxy smartphone from a year or two ago, maybe even three, you do not need to spend $1,300 to upgrade unless something is seriously wrong with your smartphone. But if you have an older phone, the Ultra hits some strong highs and offers a well-rounded experience. The Screen Photograph: Julian Chokkattu Samsung's Privacy Display is exclusive to the Galaxy S26 Ultra, and it's a hardware feature built into the screen. It mimics privacy screen protectors without manually applying one to your phone, and it doesn't dramatically reduce screen brightness or image quality. Even better, because it's integrated, you can customize when the Privacy Display turns on through the software. Mine activates automatically with select messaging apps, banking apps, and for notifications, and there's no visual indication when looking at the phone straight on that the Privacy Display is enabled or not (unless you tilt the screen slightly). You can still see the screen from the sides with Privacy Display enabled, it's just much dimmer and harder to make out the content. For maximum effect, you can turn on Max Privacy Protection via the quick settings menu, which makes it near impossible to read the screen from the sides. You don't want to use that mode all the time because the screen looks washed out, but it's good for when you want to be extra private. Oddly, Samsung doesn't let you configure this extra layer to automatically turn on with specific apps—it's a manual toggle every time. I've seen some complaints online about the Privacy Display affecting the screen quality, but I have to disagree. Then again, the first thing I did when setting up the phone was max out the screen resolution to Quad HD + and also set the colors to Vivid. I haven't seen any fuzzy text, and brightness hasn't been a problem for me either. Yes, you can buy a cheap privacy screen protector and add it to any phone, but sometimes you do want the person next to you—be it a friend or family member—to be able to read the screen alongside you. Or maybe the phone is on a table, and you want to lazily scroll TikTok while trying to keep an eye on work. That's where a standard privacy screen protector won't help, as it blocks you from seeing your own screen, but Samsung's solution gets around that. Now, I wish every smartphone had a privacy screen. You don't need to be doing anything illicit or extremely sensitive to justify having this feature. Maybe you want your conversation with a loved one to be private. Maybe you're authenticating a login and don't want anyone else to see the code. Or you're opening your banking app, and don't want anyone snooping at your checking account. It's just nice to have privacy. The Phone Photograph: Julian Chokkattu Samsung has made its Ultra smartphone more like the standard Galaxy S26 and S26+, with rounded corners instead of the boxy look of its predecessors. (It's still the only one of the lot with the integrated S Pen stylus.) The overall design language is still quite dull, and the phone's muted colors aren't exciting (you can buy an iPhone 17 Pro in orange for crying out loud!). Annoyingly, the phone rocks on a table worse than ever. The S26 Ultra may be slimmer, but the camera module is thicker, so you'll have a rather inelegant experience when tapping the screen with the phone on a surface. A case solves this problem, but I prefer a caseless experience. Also unfortunate is the lack o