Samsung Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26+ Review: Lacking Ambition

I didn’t even get Samsung’s Now Nudge feature to work. It’s built into Samsung’s keyboard (which, yes, still sucks and has terrible voice dictation), and is supposed to proactively suggest things based on the context of what’s on the screen. For example, if someone asks you to send photos from a recent trip, a button should appear to go to the Samsung Gallery app and choose a selection to send. But I just haven’t seen a boost.

Camera trio

Not much has changed with the cameras on these phones. In fact, Samsung added larger apertures to two of the S26 Ultra series cameras, but the S26 and S26+ don’t get any such improvements. It’s hard to complain too much as this is still a capable three-camera system.

However, I compared several low-light images from the Galaxy S26+ with those from the cheaper Google Pixel 10, and in many cases I preferred the latter’s photos. In particular, the 5X zoom offered by Google compared to Samsung’s 3X zoom: it’s simply sharper and zooms further, giving you more versatility, although Google has white balance issues. This is not always the case there; there are several photos where the S26+ performed better.

I’m glad that the only new feature that has caught on is Samsung’s Horizon Lock, which you enable when using Samsung’s Super Steady stabilization mode. This allows you to be more carefree when holding the phone while recording video, as the camera locks on the horizon and uses data from the phone’s accelerometer to keep images steady. I shot a clip with HDR enabled on a sunny day and deliberately moved the phone around a bit, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the clip.

Ultimately, I think most people would find an Android phone like Google’s Pixel 10, which has steadily dropped to $599 on sale, more than capable of meeting their needs, or try to find last year’s Galaxy S25 series on sale. The Galaxy S26 and S26+ are very good flagships, but they just don’t raise the bar.