Samsung Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, S26 Ultra Launch Date, Prices, Features and How to Pre-Order

Samsung has unveiled the Samsung Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra, opening pre-orders immediately ahead of an 11 March on-sale date, with the company pitching a new wave of 'intuitive, proactive, and adaptive Galaxy AI features' as the headline upgrade.

That matters because the flagship smartphone race has stopped being a simple camera-and-chip arms race and turned into a battle over what your phone can do without being asked. Samsung is clearly betting that consumers are ready to trade a little control for convenience, even as the hardest questions around privacy, accuracy and everyday usefulness are still largely unresolved and, in places, simply taken on trust.

Samsung Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, S26 Ultra Put AI In Charge

Samsung's own framing is blunt: this is an AI-first refresh, with the firm saying the Galaxy S26 line offers its most 'intuitive, proactive, and adaptive Galaxy AI features' so far. Some of that is familiar territory dressed up with new labels, but there are also features that try to solve annoyingly real problems like distraction, spam calls and the endless scavenger hunt for photos buried across apps.

Now Nudge, for instance, is designed to step in with suggestions meant to keep you on task, and Samsung says the phone can automatically surface relevant photos when someone asks for them, sparing you the app-hopping. Now Brief is positioned as a more proactive daily briefing that draws on personal context to bring up reminders for important events. Circle to Search gets improved multi-object recognition so it can identify and locate multiple items inside an image, which is the sort of upgrade that sounds niche until you are staring at a screenshot trying to work out where to buy the thing you saw.

Samsung is also putting more emphasis on calls and security. Call Screening is designed to challenge unknown callers and then summarise why they rang, while Privacy Alerts uses machine learning to flag situations where apps with device admin privileges try to access sensitive data without good reason. There is also a Private Album feature that lets users hide selected photos and videos without creating a separate folder or signing in to a Samsung account, which feels like Samsung admitting that not every privacy feature should require extra admin work.

Then there is Bixby, recast as a 'conversational device agent' for settings changes and troubleshooting, and Samsung says users can opt for other chatbots, such as Gemini and Perplexity, triggered by a button press or a voice prompt. The company also says the Galaxy S26 line can run multi-step tasks in the background so AI agents can complete work while the user does something else, an appealing promise that will live or die on whether it saves time or simply creates new ways to be interrupted.

Samsung Galaxy S26, S26 Plus, S26 Ultra Lean On Privacy Display And Cameras

The range breaks down as expected. The 6.3-inch Galaxy S26 is the smallest and cheapest, the 6.7-inch Galaxy S26+ sits in the middle, and the 6.9-inch Galaxy S26 Ultra takes the top slot. All three use OLED displays, but only the Ultra supports the S Pen stylus, a reminder that Samsung still wants one model to feel like a work tool rather than just another slab for doomscrolling.

The Ultra also gets the most interesting new piece of hardware, a built-in 'Privacy Display' aimed at shoulder surfers. Samsung says it is clear head-on but harder to read from the side, working at the pixel level by controlling how light is dispersed. It can be set to kick in only for specific apps or moments, such as entering a PIN, and Samsung says there are partial and maximum privacy options. On paper, it is a smart acknowledgement of how people actually use phones in public, on trains, at desks, in cafés, with someone always a bit too close.

Photography remains a core sales pitch and, again, the Ultra gets the bragging rights. Samsung says the Galaxy S26 Ultra includes a 200-megapixel wide lens, a 50-megapixel ultra wide lens, plus two telephoto cameras, with one 10-megapixel telephoto offering 3x optical zoom and a second 50-megapixel telephoto offering 5x optical zoom and 10x 'optical quality' zoom. There is also a new Nightography feature for clearer low-light video, and a string of AI-assisted editing tools that lean hard into 'fix it later' photography.

Photo Assist lets users describe an edit, from restoring missing elements to removing objects, and Samsung says it can even switch a photo from day to night or change a person's outfit. Creative Studio, meanwhile, uses sketches, photos or prompts to create and edit AI-generated visuals, including stickers, wallpapers and invitations, an obvious attempt to keep users creating inside Samsung's ecosystem instead of exporting everything to standalone apps.

Under the hood, the S26 line uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, and Samsung claims that in the Ultra the CPU is 19 percent faster than the prior generation, the GPU is 24 percent faster, and neural processing is up 39 percent. Samsung also says the Ultra has an updated vapour chamber with thermal material at the sides of the processor for better heat dissipation, plus a 'ProScaler' feature for improved photo and video image scaling. Most models come with 12GB of RAM, while the 1TB S26 Ultra variant has 16GB, which is a quiet hint about who Samsung thinks will lean hardest on on-device AI.

Charging gets a bump too, with Samsung saying the phones can reach 75 percent in 30 minutes and support wireless charging up to 25W. Alongside the phones, Samsung introduced Galaxy Buds4 and Buds4 Pro, intended to pair with the S26 line. The Buds4 promise an updated fit and better sound quality, while the Buds4 Pro add Active Noise Cancellation, upgraded Adaptive EQ, head gestures to accept or decline calls, and AI agent activation.

For buyers, the practical details are straightforward, even if regional availability and pricing beyond dollars are not confirmed in the announcement and should be treated with a grain of salt. Samsung says pre-orders start today, with US starting prices set at $899.99 for the Galaxy S26, $1,099.99 for the Galaxy S26+, and $1,299.99 for the Galaxy S26 Ultra, while the Galaxy Buds4 are also up for pre-order.