Samsung Galaxy S26 review: The smartphone status quo

It's already smartphone season. Samsung's annual deluge encompasses three new phones for 2026: the frontier-pushing S26 Ultra ($1,300) with its innovative Privacy Screen, the S26 ($899) and the S26+ ($999). The smaller flagships, yet again, are iterative versions of what came before, with the major differences centering on bigger batteries and brighter screens. <br /> I'm getting waves of deja vu as I review the Galaxy S26, because at times I was writing exactly what I wrote last year — including the part about it being a little too similar to what came before. <br /> <br /> <br /> Hardware <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Image by Mat Smith for Engadget<br /> <br /> <br /> Let's focus [...]