Samsung held their event today in San Francisco, California to launch this years S26 Galaxy line (of which, the Ultra and its privacy display were what I was interested in). The majority of these events are PR/marketing that consume more time than is necessary (am actually surprised they haven’t copied Apple with the pre-recorded format).
I watched the VOD of the livestream after it actually ended (it begins an hour in since they ran marketing junk prior to the event start) and found most of the AI infrastructure marketing beyond annoying. The VOD itself is close to 4 hours long but the event ran only for about an hour (the remainder of the VOD repeats the event again).
The much shorter S26 Ultra intro video still had to throw in all of that “AI phone” references (why I always disliked product marketing because they don’t know when to STFU about certain points); the clip generally highlights what I wanted to know in under 4 minutes.
I ended up preordering the S26 Ultra (512GB); the Cobalt Violet looked nice but I chose Silver Shadow instead. As noted before, this foray into Android is mainly for testing purposes. I am not going to deny that the S25 Ultra feels really good for such a large phone (which I normally don’t care for); the S26 Ultra will weigh slightly less and also has a slightly thinner profile.
As for the S25 Ultra, every time I use it for even a short period of time and pickup my iPhone 15 Pro and 16 Pro, both of them feel so small (but in reality, are still bigger than what I prefer). An iPhone 17 Pro Max would be around the same physical size as the S25/26 Ultra but slightly thicker and significantly more heavier.
Taking advantage of the Unpacked discounts plus event limited double rewards ($8.90×2), the total is $577 with tax. March 11th is when the new devices are slated to ship.
