Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority
I loved the Galaxy S26 Ultra more than I thought I would. The on-paper specs led me and others to assume it would be another incremental upgrade not worth my interest, as has been the case for years now. Once I got one, I realized there was a lot to love and that even small changes can make a big difference.
It pains me to say it, but Galaxy S27 rumors have already started to trickle in, and soon that will be a deluge. With that in mind, here are three things I want Samsung to change next year.
What do you want Samsung to upgrade with the Galaxy S27 Ultra?
194 votes
Battery capacity
62%
Charging
6%
Cameras
21%
Display
3%
The S Pen
7%
Screen brightness
1%
My three wishes for the Galaxy S27 Ultra
Megan Ellis / Android Authority
The Galaxy S26 Ultra has good cameras … mostly. The primary, 5x telephoto, and the ultrawide take great photos in good lighting. The issues arise when you try to take a picture of a black cat or use the 3x telephoto sensor.
You read that right — the Galaxy S26 Ultra, and my Z Fold 7 for that matter, doesn’t like my cat, and we simply can’t have that, can we?
Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority
Look at his paws tho
Whenever I try to take photos of Fatus Cattus in anything less than perfect lighting, the phone is utterly incapable of focusing on him and never switches into macro mode when I get close, as seen above. My Pixel 10 Pro and Razr Fold don’t have this problem, so either there’s something not quite right with Samsung’s focusing, or the S26 Ultra is intimidated by such a rotund specimen of perfection. Could be either, really.
What’s especially frustrating about this is that the macro mode button in Samsung’s camera app isn’t always there — it only appears when it detects you’re close to something, which it fails to do here. I have to tap the ultrawide shortcut and take the photo that way, but then the image is distorted.
If the phone itself doesn’t bother with the 3X lens, why should we?
The 3x telephoto camera is another pain point. It’s virtually unchanged from the Galaxy S21 Ultra, which stands out in stark contrast to the other three sensors that have been upgraded significantly since 2021.
The S21 Ultra needed the 3x camera. Its periscope telephoto was 10X, so having something in between that and the 1x was a good idea. But Samsung swapped that 10x for a 5x with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and since then, the 3x sensor has been redundant. The 200MP main sensor takes better photos at 3x crop than the dedicated 3x lens does, so much so that the S26 Ultra will often crop the main sensor rather than switch lenses. If the phone itself doesn’t bother with the 3x lens, why should we?
Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority
Finally, let’s talk design. I don’t want every phone to look the same, but I do want them all to have Qi2 magnets. There’s more than one reason Samsung hasn’t built magnets into its phones yet, and one is the design of the cameras.
As you can see in the image above, my S26 Ultra with a Qi2 case doesn’t play well with many accessories. My Baseus battery bank catches on the corner of the 5x telephoto lens, so every photo taken with that lens ends up a blurry close-up of the battery bank. More importantly, the phone doesn’t charge properly.
A redesign of Samsung’s cameras would fix this and add some much-needed flair to an aging design. A horizontal bar like the Pixel would do the trick, or Samsung could just do as I’ve already suggested and remove the useless 3x sensor, moving the 5x to where that currently lives. Either way, this is a laughable experience, and Samsung needs to do something about it.
Keep everything else the same
Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority
Everything else about the Galaxy S26 Ultra is still pretty great. I know we’d all love for Samsung to put a bigger silicon-carbon battery in the S27 Ultra. However, my S26 Ultra’s battery life has been so good, I wouldn’t be too disappointed if Samsung didn’t switch to a bigger battery. I haven’t been able to kill this battery in the space of a day, no matter how much I throw at it, and the 60W charging tops it up more than fast enough, too.
Everything else about the phone, despite its similarities to older models, is excellent. Performance is top-notch, One UI is still one of the best flavors of Android, and the cameras are fantastic, aside from the shortcomings I mentioned earlier. I know we all want phones to be less boring and to excite us like they used to, but that’s hard to achieve. Upgrades used to be exciting because there were still major technological leaps to be made. That’s not true anymore, and that’s okay.
If the Galaxy S27 Ultra is as good as the S26 Ultra in these areas and addresses my issues with the cameras, it’ll be as close to perfect as ever before.
Samsung Galaxy S26 UltraSamsung Galaxy S26 Ultra
Privacy display • Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy • Power AI features
Powerful flagship with top-tier cameras, AI, and privacy features.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra is Samsung’s slimmest and lightest Ultra yet, pairing a 6.9-inch display with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy and a redesigned cooling system. It doubles down on imaging with a brighter 200MP main camera, upgraded zoom, advanced 8K video features, and Ultra-exclusive privacy and Galaxy AI tools.
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