- Someone has already apparently bought a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra
- They have shown both the phone and its box
- We also get a look at the Privacy Display in action
We’re now just a few days away from the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S26 series on February 25, but a store in Dubai apparently hasn’t gotten the memo as it appears to be already selling the phones.
X user @KaroulSahil (via PhoneArena) claims to have bought a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra in the country and has shown off the phone on camera.
Across a few different posts, you can see the phone’s retail box, a comparison with some other handsets and its Privacy Display feature in action.
As for the comparison, you can see above that it is shown from the back alongside an iPhone 17 Pro Max and handsets from Vivo and Oppo. It appears to be a similar size to those phones, if perhaps a bit taller, and also looks a lot like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, except now there’s a camera island.
Perhaps most interesting is the Privacy Display – an important feature that Samsung has already teased but we haven’t had a proper look at until now.
In a short clip, you can see that when Privacy Display is enabled, the screen becomes very dim when viewed from the sides, so snoopers can’t easily see what you’re doing on your phone.
There’s also a switch to ‘Maximum Privacy Protection’ which, based on previous leaks we suspect, lowers the screen’s brightness even when viewed from the front to make things even less visible from the sides, but that needs to be confirmed.
It doesn’t look as smart as we hoped
Although some leaks suggested that Privacy Display would be highly customizable, where you could, for example, have it automatically launch in certain situations, such as when you’re away from home, or only hide certain parts of the screen, this clip suggests that may not be the case, as only these two toggles are visible.
Of course, it’s possible that there are other controls elsewhere, or that enabling “Maximum Privacy Protection” reveals other options. Or maybe this is running an early version of Samsung’s software. So we can’t be sure that these 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 good, because there won’t be much in the way of other exciting upgrades here. We’ll find out for sure on February 25.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can too follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, video unboxings, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
