- Apparently someone has already bought a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra
- They have shown both the phone and its box
- We also take a look at the Privacy Screen in action.
We’re just a couple of days away from the February 25 launch of the Samsung Galaxy S26 series, but one store in Dubai apparently didn’t get the memo as it appears to be already selling the phones.
X user @KaroulSahil (via PhoneArena) claims to have purchased a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra in the country and has shown the phone on camera.
In a few different posts you can see the phone’s retail box, a comparison to other phones, and its privacy display feature in action.
As far as the comparison goes, you can see above that it’s shown from the back alongside an iPhone 17 Pro Max and phones from Vivo and Oppo. It appears to be a similar size to these phones, though perhaps a little taller, and also looks a lot like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, except there’s now a camera island.
What’s perhaps more interesting is the privacy screen, an important feature that Samsung has already teased, but which we haven’t properly looked at until now.
In a short clip, you can see that when Privacy Screen is enabled, the screen becomes very dark when viewed from the sides, so snoops won’t be able to easily see what you’re doing on your phone.
There’s also an option for ‘Maximum Privacy Protection’, which based on previous leaks we suspect reduces the screen’s brightness even when viewed from the front, to make things even less visible from the sides, but that remains to be confirmed.
Doesn’t seem as smart as we expected
However, while some leaks suggested that the Privacy Screen would be highly customizable – being able to, for example, automatically activate it during certain situations, such as when you’re away from home, or only hide certain parts of the screen – this clip suggests that might not be the case, as only those two buttons are visible.
Of course, there may be other controls in other places, or turning on ‘Maximum Privacy Protection’ may reveal other options. Or perhaps you are running an older version of Samsung software. So we can’t be sure that those options won’t be offered, but it doesn’t look promising.
Still, even without them, Privacy Display looks like it could be a really useful feature, and that’s a good thing, because based on the leaks there won’t be many other interesting updates here. We’ll know for sure on February 25.
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