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Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Here, it has a plethora of upgrades right from the design to its luxurious new design View privacywhich aims to prevent people from spying on any suspicious things you do during your commute. But the Ultra range has always been where Samsung unleashes the latest and greatest camera technology, so let’s take a closer look at what’s new for the photographers among you.
In terms of hardware, not much has changed. It features a 200MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide-angle camera, 10MP 3x telephoto cameras and 50MP 5x telephoto cameras. These specs are the same as the previous S25 Ultra, so those of you hoping for a camera overhaul to keep up The upcoming Xiaomi 17 Ultra phone You may be disappointed.
The larger aperture on the main lens and 5x telephoto camera should help the Galaxy S26 Ultra take better night photos and videos.
But there were some modifications. The main and ultra-wide cameras now have wider apertures, which should help capture more light and be especially useful in low-light situations. In fact, Samsung specifically highlighted the improved Night Mode photo performance for both stills and video, as Night Video Mode uses more advanced software processing to reduce noise and enhance colors.
Speaking of video, it will still shoot in 8K and support Log codecs with built-in LUTs (which is what cinema professionals call filters, basically), making the phones even more attractive to serious video creators. To show the phone in action, Samsung took a leaf out of Apple’s playbook and filmed and live-streamed its launch event in San Francisco using the S26 Ultra.
Samsung filmed its event using the Galaxy S26 Ultras.
There’s also a feature called Horizon Lock, which aims to keep the horizon level while shooting video, no matter how you rotate and turn your phone. This type of stabilization is already found in action cameras, and can be useful for shooting intense action, such as if you’re running to keep up with your friend’s skiing film.
But since it’s 2026, and AI is the buzzword on every tech company’s lips, many of the major updates are coming in the form of generative AI. It’s built into the camera experience, allowing you to use natural language prompts to edit photos, including overlaying one element of your photo onto another, or even changing the outfit someone in your photo is wearing.
Nah Unpacked eventSamsung showed off the features, explaining how its AI tools can take a photo of a dog and place it in a girl’s arms in another photo. The company also showed how the phone can instantly transform a woman’s outfit from a simple T-shirt to a comfortable jacket, and then to a more rugged aesthetic.
There’s a lot of AI technology built into the photography experience on the S26 Ultra.
To be fair, the images looked realistic – at least as far as I could see in the YouTube live stream – although how these tools actually work in daily use remains to be seen until we spend some time with them. The bigger question is whether you actually need it. I won’t answer that for you, but I will say that I’m disappointed that Samsung is following the trend of using AI tricks as major upgrades to its cameras instead of focusing on taking better photos in the real world.
I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve had some time to take photos around my beautiful city Edinburgh, Scotland. There, I’ll focus on seeing how well the phone can take photos I want to share with family and friends, not just how easy it is to wear a fake jacket.