Samsung Galaxy S26 review

One UI 8.5 and Android 16

The Galaxy S26 runs on the same One UI 8.5 software as its siblings, and it's based on the latest Android 16 OS. There are no major changes to the UI, just some minor under-the-hood changes and a handful of new AI features.

According to Samsung's software support policy, the S26 series will receive 7 major OS updates along with 7 years of security patches. That is one of the longest software support commitments in the industry.

Home screen • Recent apps • Quick toggles/Notification shade

As the granular version change implies, Samsung's new software doesn't introduce any big changes. We've got the same UI and mostly the same features, but as is the case for the last couple of years, all upgrades are within the Galaxy AI realm. There are a few new additions, but it's mostly about improvements of existing AI-powered functionalities.

Settings menu

We've covered the One UI 8.5 extensively in our Galaxy S26 Ultra review, so make sure to check that out. We are happy to see all of the Galaxy AI features trickle down to the standard Galaxy S26, so all the features that you see in the S26 Ultra's software section are present in the entry Galaxy S26.

Benchmark performance

This year, for better or worse, Samsung decided to go back to its two-chipset strategy. The US, China and Japan get a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, whereas the rest of the world gets Samsung's Exynos 2600 chip (our review unit).

The Exynos 2600 is a cutting-edge chip manufactured on a 2nm process and designed with a strong focus on accelerating AI workloads while improving efficiency.

The chipset relies on the latest ARM CPU architecture and adopts an interesting core configuration. Instead of the traditional big-middle-little cluster arrangement, Samsung replaces the small efficiency cores with mid-tier cores, aiming to deliver better sustained performance while maintaining high efficiency for lighter tasks. According to Samsung, the new CPU delivers up to 39% higher computing performance compared to its predecessor.

AI processing is handled by a significantly upgraded NPU, which Samsung claims offers up to 113% higher AI performance, alongside lower latency and improved power efficiency - an increasingly important aspect as more on-device AI features become integrated into the system.

Graphics duties fall to the new Xclipse 960 GPU, which promises a major leap forward as well. Samsung claims up to up to 39% the computing performance, along with as much as 50% better ray tracing performance compared to its predecessor - we're guessing they mean the Exynos 2500, which only saw the light of day in the Galaxy Z Flip7.

When it comes to memory, the Galaxy S26 base configuration now starts at 12GB/256GB - there is no longer a 128GB tier. A 12GB/512GB option is still available, too.

Storage is officially quoted to be 4.x. We'd say Samsung is likely using UFS 4.2 storage, judging by the sequential write speeds we got, but it could also be UFS 4.1. Either way, that hardly matters as the performance difference between UFS 4.1 and 4.2 is negligible.

In the multi-core CPU scores, the Exynos 2600 was able to match the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 inside the S26 Ultra just fine. We saw an average of 10% improvement over last year's Snapdragon 8 Elite inside the S25 & S25+.

However, looking at the single-core scores, the Exynos 2600 barely performed at the level of last year's crop of chips.

There's more of that to be seen in Antutu, too. Version 10 of the test showed some lead of the Exynos 2600 over last year's chips, but in Version 11, it surprised us by scoring just about the same. A look at the subscores in Antutu 11 showed that the Galaxy S26 Ultra and its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 was scoring much higher in the Graphics and UX sub-categories of the test in particular.

And finally, getting to the strictly graphics part of the tests (3D Mark), the Exynos 2600 did show some improvement over the 8 Elite inside the S25 & S25+, but it also scored much lower than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 inside the S26 Ultra.

So to sum up, when it comes to raw performance, the Exynos 2600 doesn't seem like a very exciting upgrade. While it did show some improvements over last year's devices in tests like Geekbench multi-core and 3DMark framerates, in other tests, it couldn't get any lead on them at all, which was disappointing (Geekbench single-core and Antutu graphics). And even in the test where it showed some performance advantage, it wasn't huge, and usually the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 inside the S26 Ultra fared noticeably better (single-core CPU tasks and graphics in general).

So while we are sure the dual-chip strategy will work well for Samsung, just like it did a couple of years ago, we still see a big gap between the devices equipped with the two chipsets, and we hate to say it, but it feels that consumers in Europe and Asia are once again on the wrong side of this divide.

Then again, the Exynos 2600 is still a powerful chip that will handle pretty much everything you throw at it. So from the user standpoint, it's not that big of a deal - it's just that we expected more out of it, given it's one of the very few upgrades in this year's Galaxy S26+.

Sustained performance

In our CPU and GPU stress tests, the Galaxy S26 scored similarly to last year's S25 and a bit worse than the Galaxy S26+. We saw about 40% performance loss in the CPU stress test scenario and more than 50% in the GPU test.

CPU and GPU stress tests