When the Samsung Galaxy S26 Extremely was launched in late February, it was the primary time in years that I felt excited for a brand new flagship launch, due to rumors of improvements just like the Privateness Show within the lead as much as the massive reveal. On seeing the brand new telephone in particular person, even the Tremendous Regular Horizontal Lock characteristic for taking pictures movies appeared like a superb concept.
As a current iPhone convert from solely a 12 months in the past, I truthfully thought the S26 Extremely would lure me again to Android, particularly since my iPhone 16 Professional Max is a technology behind.
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AI telephone? No thanks
Samsung leaned onerous into the Galaxy S26 Extremely being an “AI telephone”, and rightly so. The Tremendous Regular characteristic and the AI-powered name screening have been highlights for me, however a lot of the AI additions have been novelties that aren’t significantly helpful.
The “Now” options have been highlighted in the course of the launch, however none of them have been helpful to me. The Now Transient widget was meant to indicate me how my day went, but it surely was nothing greater than the climate, my calendar and advisable YouTube movies that have been already on my Watch Later playlist.
The Now Bar works considerably equally to the iPhone’s Dynamic Island, however I discovered it much less helpful — plus it solely lives within the dwelling display whereas the Dynamic Island is at all times there. Now Nudge, in the meantime, felt like nothing greater than glorified predictive texting, and it additionally doesn’t assist that it’s solely obtainable by means of Samsung Keyboard (I favor Gboard for Android telephones).
The S26 Extremely added a prompt-based generative AI photograph modifying instrument known as “Photograph Help” , which is helpful in concept, however the finish end result makes it apparent that AI did loads of the heavy lifting. The picture technology characteristic, Artistic Studio, can also be simply one other novelty, and it additionally outputs lower-quality footage.
Samsung additionally added Perplexity to its Bixby voice assistant, which simply looks like a replication of the present Google Gemini integration that I already use, which is greater than sufficient for my wants.
That digital camera bump and what’s not there
Samsung additionally boasted how a lot slimmer and lighter the S26 Extremely is in comparison with its predecessor, which sadly resulted in a way more outstanding digital camera bump.
The bump is so massive that the handset wobbles fairly vigorously when positioned on a flat floor — hardly the form of motion I need to see from a tool this costly. Seeing the bump instantly made me search for a case thick sufficient to make the S26 Extremely lie a bit bit flatter. This implies I’d find yourself hiding that skinny chassis that Samsung was boasting about inside a thick case, which form of defeats the aim.
What to learn subsequent
Talking of circumstances, utilizing them so as to add magnetic charging simply isn’t the identical because the built-in magnets in iPhones and Google Pixel telephones. It doesn’t assist that the S26 Extremely’s digital camera bump design additionally blocks some equipment from attaching correctly to the circumstances’ magnets.
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