Samsung Is Very Confident in the Cameras of the Galaxy S26 Series.
It’s unlikely to surprise anyone that Samsung claims the new S26 series delivers “the most powerful Galaxy experience yet.” The company announced the new phones during its massive Unpacked 2026 event , and like most new smartphones these days, this year’s models appear to be merely iterative updates to last year’s S25 series phones.
The company has been heavily promoting the S26 series’ cameras, but what’s interesting is that the camera hardware remains largely unchanged. Looking at the specs, you’ll see largely identical lens and sensor sizes. The S26 and S26+ have three rear cameras, while the S26 Ultra adds a fourth; all three phones feature the same 12-megapixel front-facing camera. Essentially, the only hardware change concerns the S26 Ultra’s 200-megapixel main camera, which now has an f/1.4 aperture compared to f/1.7 on the S25 Ultra’s 200-megapixel camera. Otherwise, Samsung hasn’t changed much.
The S26’s cameras are still a worthy improvement over the S25’s.
However, the S26 series, especially the S26 Ultra, has a number of clear advantages. While the front-facing cameras remain the same as last year, they now use a new AI processor to enhance detail: if there’s too much light in the frame, the S26 series can add virtual light to balance the image. These phones also perform better than previous models at shooting video in low light, expanding the capabilities of the Night Scene feature, which previously enhanced detail in photos; it now also works for video.
Speaking of video, Samsung says the S26 can automatically stabilize shots, keeping the image level even when you’re not looking at the frame, using a feature called “Super Steady with Horizontal Lock” (catchy name!).
If you choose the Ultra, you’ll also get a number of professional video features. First, the phone supports the APV video codec, Samsung’s professional video codec, ideal for professional video editors. Shooting in 8K APV format is expected to result in large file sizes, so it’s great that the S26 Ultra supports external storage recording, just like the latest iPhone Pro models. When shooting in Log format, you can apply LUTs to your footage to fine-tune overall image color grading.
One of the minor improvements is the “Ocean” mode, which allows for detailed underwater shots. Previously, this feature was only available to professionals, but in the S26 series, it’s included in the Expert RAW settings.
Samsung dropped a surprise at Unpacked, announcing at the end of the show that the entire livestream was filmed using the S26 Ultra’s cameras. This follows Apple’s practice of recording events using iPhones, even though Apple no longer hosts livestreams. As far as I understand, this is the first time a company like Samsung has livestreamed its entire presentation using one of its smartphone cameras. (Although both Apple and Samsung also equip their smartphones with expensive equipment for capturing such images.)
Galaxy AI technology also adds new camera features to the S26.
Samsung’s presentation focused on Galaxy AI technology, the benefits of which also extended to the cameras. For example, the S26’s document scanner can remove unwanted objects from scanned images, such as a thumb or finger, and combine multiple scans into a single PDF file.
You can also use Galaxy AI for guided editing. Samsung demonstrated how to merge two photos simultaneously so that an object from one image seamlessly blends into the other. In this example, a dog from one image was added to the arms of a woman sitting in a cafe in the other. Other examples of guided editing include changing clothes in an image or editing a bite of a cupcake.
None of these improvements alone are enough of a reason to upgrade from the S25 to Samsung, but they do demonstrate Samsung’s confidence in the capabilities and quality of its cameras. Even if you’re not interested in AI editing, the extra detail in low-light shooting will be useful, and budding filmmakers may appreciate the pro features—especially codec support and the ability to shoot to external storage. But, as always, we’ll have to wait until reviewers get their hands on the phones before we know how good these cameras really are.