Most smartphone companies are facing the exact same problem: it’s difficult to make meaningful year-over-year upgrades on these devices. Companies like Nothing have decided not to release a flagship phone in 2026. But this is Samsung, and like clockwork, here are the Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus, and like clockwork, they are incredibly similar to the Galaxy S25.

And the S24, and the S23, and even the S22 in terms of design, battery and camera specs. If you upgrade to one of these phones from an S22 then I’m not saying you won’t notice a nice boost in performance, improved build quality and software perks. But the basic experience is very similar. Samsung has not made massive strides with its camera technology where Android rivals such as Google, OnePlus, Xiaomi and Vivo are basing their best phones around improved cameras.

The S26 and S26 Plus are safe bets. They have tried and tested form factors with outstanding 6.3-inch and 6.7-inch 120Hz OLEDs respectively, and designs refined to the point of being generic. If you asked AI to draw you a 3D model of a smartphone, it would probably look like this.

The triple cameras on the rear are the only things that interrupt a glass-backed slab, though I must say the matte finish is very nice and stops mucky fingerprints from making a mess of the styling. I prefer the small size of the regular S26, which remains one of the only truly one-handed premium phones you can buy.

That premium will cost you though, with the S26 starting at £879, an £80 rise from last year’s S25. Granted, this now bags you 256GB of storage, but that is a lot of money. If you prefer a larger screen and battery and faster charging at 45W instead of 25W, the S26 Plus, which is identically designed, costs £100 more than last year at £1,099 for 256GB.

That’s the same price as the 256GB iPhone 17 Pro, Apple’s top-of-the-line iPhone. But Samsung will charge you a whopping £1,279 for the Galaxy S26 Ultra if you want its ultimate phone this year. My colleague Dave Snelling reviewed that phone, which has better cameras and larger battery, plus the S Pen stylus and a new Privacy Display that these cheaper S26s lack.

But I’m here to see if there’s value in the S26 and S26 Plus. I do understand that, as a phone reviewer, I am going to see more similarities in these annual updates compared to consumers who just want to know if these phones are good or not. So yes, they are good. But Samsung is clearly coasting here, and these are lazy upgrades.

Samsung has given these phones Qi wireless charging support, but has not opted to add Qi2 magnetic charging – so unlike iPhones and the Google Pixel 10, you can’t snap the S26s onto MagSafe chargers. Samsung instead puts magnets in its official cases to achieve this, but the firm did not send me any to test out.

A big change on paper is that the S26 and S26 Plus are using the Samsung-made Exynos 2600 chipset in every country bar the US and China, whereas the S26 Ultra has the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 globally. It’s not clear why this choice was made, but I have no complaints with the Exynos after 11 days of using both phones.

If anything, the battery life is improved over the S25 series, particularly on the smaller S26, which has a 4,300mAh cell. That’s larger than on the S25, but really this appears to be the only upgrade aside from the doubling of base storage.

The 50MP main, 10MP 3x optical telephoto and 12MP ultra-wide on both phones is identical to the S25. Shots are very solid from the main lens, but I had really hoped Samsung would try and do something better this year. For flagship phones that cost from nearly £900, I’d expect better processing, which still errs on the saturated colours Samsung is known for.

I prefer shots from the Pixel 10a, a £499 phone, which has better contrast and dynamic range, but to be fair, the S26’s cameras are mostly on par with the Pixel and the latest iPhone 17. If you really want the best in mobile photography, you can pay more for something like the £1,299 Xiaomi 17 Ultra, which is leagues ahead of any Samsung phone, including the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

One cool feature these phones have is called horizontal lock, and it’ll be very welcome if you’re annoyed by shaky video taken on your phone. Tap an icon to turn this tool on and it’ll – quite magically, to be honest – keep your video oriented even if you don’t keep your phone perfectly straight. It effectively stabilises the horizon, and means rushed video of kids, pets and sporting events will stay on a level even when your hand doesn’t.

It’s a glimmer of the Samsung of years gone by, shipping an excellent new technology its rivals didn’t do first.

I also like the new audio eraser, which is a toggle in the quick settings panel in the notification shade when you’re watching video. It expertly removes background noise from videos in real time so you can hone in on the audio you want to hear. The best use case I found was to turn down the crowd noise in a highlight reel for a football match – it turned down the singing and shouting so you could hear the commentators.

I personally wouldn’t want to do that, but it could prove a useful accessibility feature.

As this is a Samsung phone there is also a confusing and annoying amount of AI shoved at you when you use these phones. It comes at you from three directions: Galaxy AI and Bixby lead Samsung’s own charge, while Google Gemini is also present. Samsung even sneakily adds a fourth option by preinstalling ChatGPT rival Perplexity as an app, which you can uninstall.

I didn’t expect Samsung’s long forgotten Bixby to be the most useful of the bunch, but being able to use voice prompts to ask questions in the settings app to find specific settings is actually really handy. Though on the other hand, I needed to do that because Samsung’s menus are so vast and unintuitive.

The software is Android 16 with Samsung’s One UI 8.5 over the top. I quite like One UI these days, even if it does change the look and feel of Android substantially. It’s very customisable, and after a few days of tweaks, I got these phones feeling like I wanted them. This includes disabling a lot of notifications from pesky apps, and toning down the still very useless Now Brief, which never shows me anything relevant.

Best of all, Samsung promises seven years of Android and security updates, so these phones are supported until 2033.

There’s not much else to say about the S26 and S26 Plus. They are the upgrades I expected, but not the ones I think we deserved. If your Samsung or other Android phone is more than four years old, you’ll enjoy the polished and solid every day phones on offer here. Maybe Samsung isn’t changing tack because it doesn’t want to damage its steady sales, but if your phone is still working OK, I’d wait to see if the S27 and S27 Plus provide more interesting upgrades.