The price went up everywhere except the top
Samsung did something unusual with the Galaxy S26 lineup: it made the middle more expensive and the top the same price. The standard Galaxy S26 now starts at $899, up from $799 last year. The S26+ starts at $1,099, up from $999. Both got $100 price increases that Samsung attributed to rising memory component costs. [1][2] Fair enough — NAND flash and DRAM prices have climbed significantly over the past year, driven largely by insatiable AI datacenter demand eating into the consumer supply chain. But the Galaxy S26 Ultra? Still $1,299. Same as the S25 Ultra. Same as the S24 Ultra before that. This isn't Samsung being generous with its flagship. It's Samsung being strategic. By compressing the price gap between the S26+ ($1,099) and the S26 Ultra ($1,299), Samsung is nudging buyers toward the top. The Ultra used to feel like a $300 splurge over the Plus. Now it's $200. For a phone you'll carry every day for two or three years, $200 is the price of a nice dinner. Samsung knows this math.
The Privacy Display is the real play
Previous Galaxy Ultra models earned their premium through familiar means: bigger screen, more cameras, S Pen stylus, more RAM. These were quantitative differences — more of the same stuff the cheaper models had. You were paying for "more."


