Samsung Galaxy S26 Review

The S26 is the small Android flagship with the fewest compromises, and it costs a hundred dollars more than it did to say so. The screen grows to 6.3 inches without the body growing much, the phone weighs 167 grams at 7.2 millimetres, and the battery moves from 4000 to 4300 mAh, which reviewers called the most meaningful hardware change of the generation. A hard day now ends with something left in it.

The chip splits by region, as it has for years. American, Canadian and Chinese buyers get the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy; everyone else gets the Exynos 2600, the first 2 nanometre phone chip anyone shipped, which has closed enough of the gap that the regional lottery is an annoyance rather than a penalty. The camera array is untouched from the S25: a 50-megapixel main, a 12-megapixel ultrawide and a 10-megapixel 3x telephoto that has now gone four years without a change. It is a complete kit and no longer a competitive one.

Charging stays at 25W, slow for 2026 and slower than the S26+ standing next to it. One UI 8.5 on Android 16 brings seven years of updates and a great deal of Galaxy AI. Base storage doubles to 256GB, which is most of what the extra hundred dollars buys.