Every Tech YouTuber Is Obsessed With Samsung's Privacy Display — Here's Why

"It's just refreshing to have a genuinely useful new feature that we haven't really seen before and isn't just some AI gimmick," said the host of Tech Chat in their first-look video. [1]

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How it actually works — and why it won't come to your current phone

Samsung has been developing the underlying display hardware for several years, and that matters for one key reason: this is not a software update. The Privacy Display requires specific hardware changes to how the pixels emit light, which means it will not be coming via an over-the-air update to any existing Galaxy phone. [1]

It's also exclusive to the S26 Ultra — not the S26 or S26 Plus. The standard and Plus models get the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, the same camera system improvements, and the same rounded aluminum design update. But the built-in privacy screen is Ultra-only, the same way the S Pen is Ultra-only.

Mr. Mobile, who attended the San Francisco launch event, put it well: "Samsung has basically transformed what used to be a hardware feature into a virtual one." [3] The comparison is to those polarized privacy screen protectors people buy and stick on their laptops or phones — except instead of a fixed physical filter that's always on, this is dynamically controlled by software at the pixel level. You get the benefit only when you want it, and the normal bright wide-angle display the rest of the time.

The trade-off worth watching: enabling the feature does drop brightness, and Tech Chat noticed that even with Privacy Display turned off, the S26 Ultra's viewing angles look slightly worse than the S25 Ultra side-by-side. [1] That's something full reviews will need to test properly with calibrated measurements.

The agentic AI demo that didn't go to plan

Samsung's other big pitch at Galaxy Unpacked was "agentic AI" — the idea that the phone can autonomously complete tasks for you. Book a car. Order dinner. Do the thing, not just look up the information.

Mr. Mobile tested it live, asking the phone to call him an Uber to a nearby coffee shop. What followed was one of the more honest unintentional product demonstrations in recent memory:

The phone said it was entering the destination. Then it said it was selecting ride options. Then it told him to confirm the ride. There was no ride. There was no confirmation screen. There was no Uber. Just the AI politely describing the process of booking an Uber without actually booking one. [3]

After three attempts — each one failing in a different way — the AI finally admitted: "I cannot currently hand off a live Uber booking to your screen or process the payment for you." [3]

To his credit, Mr. Mobile didn't bury it. His take: "AI everybody." And he connected it directly to Rabbit's R1 launch disaster two years ago, when that product's AI agent features also failed out of the gate and triggered the backlash that still follows the device today.

To be fair to Samsung, these features are genuinely hard to build, and the phone did eventually successfully complete an Uber booking in one attempt. Samsung is also launching the agentic features only in the US and South Korea initially, presumably because they need controlled rollout environments. [2] But the gap between the marketing language — "truly agentic AI," "the beginning of agentic AI" — and what happens when a reviewer actually tries to use it is a gap Samsung needs to close before it becomes the story.

What else is new — and what's still frustratingly the same

Beyond Privacy Display and the AI story, there's a real but modest upgrade list:

The design is better. The S26 Ultra is 4 grams lighter and 0.3mm thinner than the S25 Ultra, and the corners are significantly more rounded. The old boxy Galaxy Note aesthetic is fully gone. Samsung switched back to aluminum (they call it "advanced armor aluminum") from last year's titanium, which is also what Apple did with the iPhone 16. Lighter, more comfortable to hold — and yes, it wobbles more on a table because the camera module sticks out further now. [1][2]

Charging got a real upgrade. 60W wired charging on the Ultra (up from 45W) should get you from zero to 75% in 30 minutes. Wireless charging jumped to 25W on the Ultra. These are meaningful improvements in daily use. [2][3]

The cameras improved in the ways that matter for low light. The main 200MP sensor has a wider f/1.4 aperture (47% brighter), and the 50MP telephoto is now f/2.9 versus f/3.4 (37% brighter). Low light videos and photos are the target improvement area, which is exactly where flagship cameras are competing right now. The Horizon Lock video feature — which lets you rotate the phone 360 degrees while keeping the horizon perfectly level — is genuinely cool and multiple creators highlighted it. [1][2][3]

But the battery is still 5,000mAh. That's the same capacity it's been since the S21 Ultra, six years ago. Chinese rivals are now on their third generation of silicon-carbon battery cells with 6,000 to 7,000mAh capacities. Samsung is standing still. [1][2][3]

And there's still no Qi2/MagSafe built in. Samsung's explanation — that 98% of their customers use cases, and the cases have magnets — got a skeptical reception from Mr. Mobile, who attended the Q&A and asked directly. The cases work. But the phone itself won't snap to MagSafe accessories, and that matters as that accessory ecosystem grows. [3]

Should you upgrade?

If you're coming from an S23 or older, the S26 Ultra is a substantial upgrade — new chip, better cameras, meaningfully better design, and the genuinely novel Privacy Display. Privacy Display alone is the kind of feature that justifies an upgrade for anyone who regularly uses their phone in public spaces where shoulder-surfing is a real concern: commuters, travelers, healthcare workers, anyone who regularly handles sensitive information in shared environments.

If you're on an S25 Ultra, the upgrade calculus is harder. The battery doesn't move. The core camera system improves but doesn't leap. The chip is faster but you probably won't feel it in daily use. Privacy Display is genuinely new — but is it $1,300 new? That's a personal call.

What all three of these creator reviews agree on is that Privacy Display is the real deal. Not a gimmick. Not an AI hallucination of a feature. An actual hardware-plus-software innovation that does something no other phone can do. [1][2][3] In a smartphone market that's been coasting on iterative improvement for years, that's worth paying attention to — even if the rest of the spec sheet is doing its best impression of last year's flagship.

Samsung's full reviews are incoming. Watch them closely.