Samsung Galaxy S26 — everything we know so far

Tom's Guide

3 days ago

Now that the 2025 foldables from Samsung have arrived, it's time to pivot our attention onto the Samsung Galaxy S26. The S26 launch may still be several months out, but we're still eager to see what Samsung has in store for 2026 — and how it's going to push its flagship devices forward.
It's still quite early in the Galaxy S26 rumor cycle, so there are plenty of things we don't know about the upcoming lineup. But we have started hearing some murmurs about what to expect, which will only increase as we get closer to 2026. One noteworthy rumor suggests Samsung may revert back to releasing three phones instead of four, as it did with the Galaxy S25 — but which three?
Here's what we know about the Samsung Galaxy S26 so far.
While we don't have a definite launch date for the Galaxy S26, we do know that Samsung generally sticks to the same release window each year. As of late, Samsung's new flagships typically arrive toward the end of January and start of February with a Galaxy Unpacked event taking place around the start of the year. A wider release typically follows two weeks later.
This brief window also means the release lands between January's CES and MWC at the end of February. In other words, Samsung schedules the Unpacked launch event at a time when it's going to dominate the limelight. It's also timed so that Samsung can claim to have the first phones arriving at the start of the year, though recently OnePlus has beaten it to the punch by a few weeks, at least in China.
For what it's worth, the Unpacked 2025 event that gave us the Galaxy S25 launch took place on January 22. The 2024 edition happened on January 17. Both of those events took place in San Jose, Calif.
As for the Galaxy S26 price, we can't be sure right now as that information tends to emerge closer to the launch event itself. But one piece of good news is that the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 is reportedly going to be the same price as the original Elite chipset. That gives Samsung one less component to have to worry about paying more for, and a better chance that prices will stay static.
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Prices on Samsung flagships currently start at $799 for the Galaxy S25. The Plus model costs $999 while the Galaxy S25 Edge debuted at $1,099. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is the most expensive phone in the lineup, starting at $1,299.
The arrival of the Galaxy S25 Edge in the spring brought the number of Galaxy S25 models to four. And that's before the release of the Galaxy S25 FE, which some people expect to see later this year. The words is, that Samsung may trim down the number of entries in the Galaxy S26 lineup.
Specifically, the Galaxy S25 Plus may have been the last model of its kind. Instead, Samsung is rumored to be replacing the Plus with a Galaxy S26 Edge — similar to how Apple is reportedly replacing the iPhone 17 Plus with the iPhone 17 Air when its new phones arrive this fall.
Sadly the S26 may follow the example set by the just-released Galaxy Z Fold 7, and ditch the S Pen stylus. According to leaker PandaFlashPro, Samsung may ditch the digitizer layer in the screen to offer true magnetic Qi2 wireless charging — something the S25 series lacks.
Without that layer, the current S Pen won't work. However there is some speculation that Samsung could have a different digitizer-free stylus, though it would likely be too large to store inside the phone itself.
Samsung may also be ditching the hole-punch camera in the S26 Ultra, with leaker Kro_roe claiming that an under display camera is on the way. We have our doubts, since the under display camera was recently removed from the Z Fold 7, but it could mean that the Ultra model finally gets the uninterrupted display we've been dreaming about.
As for the rest of the S26 design, a report from well-known leaker Ice Universe suggests that the Galaxy S26 Ultra won't look all that different from the Galaxy S25 Ultra. That leaker says we can expect some extra height and width, lower weight, and the same 6.9-inch display.
The first major camera rumor we've heard about the 2026 Samsung flagships claims that the entry-level Galaxy S26 will retain the 50MP main camera for another year. That said, we may see a brand new sensor, one that's larger than before to capture more light — something that can greatly benefit picture quality in different conditions.
The bigger change could come to the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which may up the ante on the telephoto lens. Some rumors promise a 200MP zooming camera with 5x magnification. The trademark secondary telephoto lens on the Ultra is also reported to get a boost to 50MP, with 3.5x optical magnification. However all that pales in comparison compared to rumors of a 324MP main camera — though that may be a bit excessive.
Further speculation claims the S26 Ultra may see the return of variable aperture, something we haven't seen on a Galaxy since 2019. The old implementation was a lot less flexible than what other phone makers, like Xiaomi, have offered in recent years. So it'll be exciting to see what Samsung can do with it.
Since the Galaxy S25 series runs on the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, our guess is that Samsung would opt for the next generation Snapdragon chip for the S26 — which we assume will be the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2.
Given how powerful the Elite chipset has proven itself, how much better will the Elite 2 be? One rumor by Digital Chat Station suggests the new chipset will be considerably more powerful — with a 4.6GHz CPU and 1.2 GHz GPU — an increase from the 4.47GHz CPU in the current Elite. This doesn't tell us a lot, but typically the higher the clock speed, the better the chip will be.
However there has been some speculation that Samsung could return to using Exynos chipsets, as it did with the Galaxy Z Flip 7. Sadly, Exynos chips often come with weaker performance, as showcased by a comparison of the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered Motorola Razr Ultra.
While it's unclear how widespread this change might be, past releases have seen Samsung only offer phones powered by Qualcomm chips in North America, with the rest of the world getting Exynos chips instead.
The fact Qualcomm Snapdragon chips have been more widely available the past few years is more of a blip compared to the previous trend — reportedly due to chip shortages and issues manufacturing 3nm Exynos hardware. Leaker Jukanlosreve claims that the S26 will rely on the Exynos 2600, one generation newer than the 2500 in the Z Flip 7.
There have been a bunch of Galaxy S26 battery rumors so far, and none of them can seem to agree on what to expect from the three phones in the lineup. The earliest suggested that we may see the phones come with silicon carbon battery chemistry, which offers much higher power density than ordinary lithium-ion batteries.
That would essentially mean more battery capacity without taking up more space. It could also translate to a smaller physical battery that frees up room for other things. It all depends on which way Samsung wants everything to run.
Some reports claim that Samsung could increase the battery capacity to somewhere between 6,000 mAh and 7,000 mAh — which would be an incredible leap upwards. Sadly later rumors suggested that the Ultra model wouldn't exceed 5,400 mAh. While larger than the 5,000 mAh battery in the Galaxy S25 Ultra, it's not quite the spectacular increase from those earlier reports, even if it is a lot more believable.
In the months since then, we've heard that the battery may not be getting any kind of increase at all, with Ice Universe claiming that the S26 Ultra will have the same 5,000 mAh battery as previous Galaxy Ultra models.
Thankfully Ice Universe also claims that the charging speed will finally exceed 45W — later claiming it would hit 60W. While that's something of a meme at this point, it's about time Samsung pushed the charging rate to something that can better rival its Chinese counterparts.
One big change that could be happening with Galaxy AI is support for other third party chatbots — not just Gemini and Bixby. Choi Won-Joon, the president and COO of Samsung's mobile division confirmed to Bloomberg that talks have been happening, but didn't specify which (if any) third parties could come to Galaxy AI.
Bloomberg notes that Samsung is "nearing a deal" with Perplexity, which would also see Samsung invest in the company.
Naturally, we assume that AI will play a huge role in the Galaxy S26's software, which we're guessing will come with a version of One UI 8. However at this early stage it's impossible to say what additional changes we might see from the phones.
At this early stage, there's still a lot we don't know about the Galaxy S26 lineup, though the rumors are slowly painting a picture of the kind of phone we should expect. Anyone hoping for a dramatically different-looking set of devices is going to be disappointed, though so far the potential upgrades do sound positive.
The rumored loss of the Plus model does intrigue us, especially when you consider that it's been inching ever closer to the Ultra model for the past few years. So the inclusion of the Edge as a part of the main trio could be a very interesting behind-the-scenes shakeup.
But for now there's still a lot we don't know about the phones — and we'll have to wait and see what future rumors and leaks hold.