In the final 12 months, the compact cellphone section has grown by leaps and bounds, with Vivo, OnePlus, and Oppo stepping up their recreation and placing out stable contenders. ‘Compact’ is a relative time period, although, as these units rock shows over 6.2 inches. However, if that’s what rocks your boat, the bottom variant in Samsung’s flagship collection nonetheless stays the most effective telephones within the class. Launched in February 2026, the brand new Galaxy S26 ditches Qualcomm’s flagship chipset for Samsung’s in-house Exynos 2600 silicon. We used it for every week and put it via a collection of checks to see if it’s nonetheless the efficiency monster it was final 12 months. Here is our overview of the Samsung Galaxy S26.

Read Also: OnePlus Pad 4 is coming to India; launch date introduced

Samsung Galaxy S26 Review: Design and Display

Box Contents

• Smartphone
• USB-C to USB-C cable
• SIM ejector
• Quick begin information

The Galaxy S26 sticks to the design language we’ve come to affiliate with Samsung’s flagship telephones. The particular person digicam cutouts at the moment are enclosed in a two-step panel. This vertical digicam island is one thing we noticed on final 12 months’s Samsung A collection. The remainder of the glass again panel stays unchanged. The matte end ensures that it doesn’t register smudges and fingerprints simply.

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The aluminium body has flat edges and rounded corners. It homes the amount rocker and the aspect key on its proper aspect and the SIM tray, main microphone, USB-C port, and speaker grille on the backside. The noise-cancelling microphone finds its manner up high. The smartphone measures 7.2mm alongside the edges and weighs simply 167g. Its smooth profile and lightweight weight lend it a superb in-hand really feel. There’s IP68 safety on board, which makes the machine water-resistant, however it nonetheless trails behind the IP69/IP69K safety supplied by many of the different flagships.

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The 6.3-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X show is barely bigger than the 6.2 panel on the Galaxy S25 (our overview right here). It has a 120Hz refresh price and might attain a peak brightness of two,600 nits. It stays one of many brightest and smoothest shows within the recreation. You don’t want to fret about legibility points whereas taking your cellphone out underneath direct daylight at midday. The contact response is solely elegant. Flicking and scrolling via the pages feels satisfying and snappy. The under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is super-fast and correct. The Galaxy S26 misses out on the privateness show characteristic, as it’s unique to the Ultra variant (our overview right here). The silver lining is that it will get to retain its anti-reflective coating.

During the overview interval, we used the Samsung Galaxy S26 to stream motion pictures and TV reveals throughout platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, and JioHotstar. The 1,080 x 2,340p AMOLED panel produced sensible visuals that packed glorious particulars. The photos had been sharp and vibrant. The colors had been very pleasing to the attention, and the punchy distinction made the viewing expertise all of the extra pleasurable. The twin speaker setup produced a well-rounded audio output.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Review: Performance and Cameras

The greatest change on the Galaxy S26 comes underneath the hood. It attracts energy from Samsung’s in-house Exynos 2600 chipset, which is constructed on a 2nm course of. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor is unique to the Ultra mannequin. The base mannequin is provided with 12GB RAM and is available in 2 storage variants:

• 256GB: Rs 87,999
• 512GB: Rs 1,07,999

We ran a few benchmark checks on the machine. Here is the way it carried out.

• AnTuTu 3D: 2,388,994
• Geekbench 6: 2,919 (single core) | 10,154 (multi-core)

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Daily driving the Galaxy S26 was an exemplary expertise. The smartphone went via routine duties like calling, instantaneous messaging, net searching, media streaming, and navigation like a scorching knife via butter. There had been no lags or stutters to be seen. Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the Exynos 2600 chipset nonetheless wants some work on the subject of thermal administration, however it doesn’t quantity to a giant difficulty in on a regular basis use.

We performed titles like BGMI and Call of Duty Mobile on the Samsung Galaxy S26 and had been happy with what we noticed. We had been capable of run each titles at 120fps whereas limiting the graphics to medium settings. The gameplay was clean and extremely pleasurable. We didn’t come throughout a single body drop throughout our time with the machine. The again panel began to heat up after 20 minutes of constant gaming, however it didn’t trigger any throttling.

Software duties on the Galaxy S26 are dealt with by the Android 16-based One UI 8.5 out of the field. Samsung has promised 7 main OS upgrades for this machine. The well-optimised software program makes you’re feeling just like the smartphone is all the time a step forward because it will get probably the most out of the Exynos 2600 chipset. The UI of the software program is an identical to its predecessor, aside from a number of tweaks (just like the trimmed search bar within the app drawer).

Samsung has added its personal model of Google’s Magic Cue to the Galaxy S26. Named ‘Now Nudge’, this characteristic scans your textual content conversations for contextual clues and presents the leads to a small field. For instance, in case you’re speaking about upcoming journey plans with a pal, Now Nudge will give you your ticket data within the dialog. Samsung maintains that the information used within the computational course of doesn’t depart your machine. However, you possibly can select to share it with Samsung for higher outcomes.

Samsung’s native digital assistant, Bixby, has acquired a giant increase on One UI 8.5. It accepts pure language enter and comes up with correct outcomes. We requested Bixby for our day by day step rely, and it regarded into the Samsung Health app and got here up with the related end result. It works nicely with third-party apps, too. When requested whether or not Suits is offered on Netflix, it instantly opened the TV present’s web page within the app.

Samsung nonetheless hasn’t moved to Si/C batteries for its flagships, however the 4,300mAh Li-ion battery pack is 300mAh bigger than the one on its predecessor. There is a visual enchancment within the battery life. On days with reasonable utilization, we had been left with a 25-30% cost within the tank earlier than bedtime. The charging pace is one space the place Samsung nonetheless wants to hold out substantial rework. The Galaxy S26 helps 25W wired and 15W wi-fi charging. It took us over an hour to totally cost the machine utilizing a Type-C USB charger.

The triple digicam array on the Galaxy S26 is an identical to the one on its predecessor. It contains a 50MP main shooter, a 12MP ultrawide lens, and a 10MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom.

The 50MP main shooter captures lovely footage in out of doors daylight situations. The photos are clear, vibrant, and sharp with out wanting synthetic or overprocessed. The distinction and dynamic vary stay on level. In restricted lighting situations, the Night Mode kicks in and resolves the noise. It does a splendid job of lighting up the topic and assigning correct colors to the picture. The Galaxy S26 is among the few telephones which you could rely upon to take an ideal image whatever the lighting situations.

Images taken by the 12MP ultrawide lens retain their sharpness and color composition. The softness is barely seen while you pixel peep. In restricted lighting situations, it depends on Night Mode to resolve the noise and render the finer particulars. Our solely gripe with this digicam is that it lacks autofocus.

The 10MP 3x telephoto lens replicates the outcomes of the first shooter. It’s good to have a compact flagship that means that you can seize your topic from a distance. The sharp particulars and vivid colors don’t depart any room for complaints. You can push the zoom to 30x and nonetheless get respectable pictures. The machine depends on AI processing to resolve the pictures with out making them blurry.

The native digicam app allows you to take portrait pictures in 4 zoom ranges: 1x, 2x, 3x, and 5x. Simply put, the portraits captured by this machine are breathtaking. The smartphone does a splendid job of recognising the topic’s boundaries and making use of a tasteful blur impact to the background. The telephoto lens takes over for the 3x pictures and allows you to seize the topic from a distance. The photos captured at 5x zoom are fairly gorgeous as nicely.

The 12MP front-facing digicam captures clear and vivid selfies with out messing with the topic’s pores and skin tone and texture. All of the cameras on this cellphone can report 4k movies at 60fps. The principal digicam has the added choice to report 8k movies at 30/24fps.

Read Also: Vivo T5 Pro 5G with an enormous 9,020mAh battery launched in India

Final Thoughts

The Samsung Galaxy S26 retains its spot on the high of the compact flagship pile. While Samsung’s in-house Exynos 2600 chipset could run slightly heat, it doesn’t depart you hanging for energy, it doesn’t matter what job you’re acting on the machine. The gorgeous Dynamic AMOLED show stays the perfect within the recreation with its buttery clean contact response, brilliant panel, and anti-reflective coating. On the software program entrance, you get the well-stocked Galaxy AI suite in addition to a reinvigorated Bixby. The 4,300mAh battery pack has handed the battery life a lift, though it’s nonetheless a step behind its Si/C counterparts. The cameras, whereas unchanged from the final mannequin, put up an ideal efficiency in a variety of lighting situations.

Buy on Amazon for Rs 87,998

Pros

• Compact kind issue
• Smooth and brilliant show
• 7 OS upgrades
• Great cameras

Cons

• Exynos chipset runs slightly heat
• Lacks IP69 safety