Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority
Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series is right around the corner, and if you’ve been paying attention to the rumor mill, you probably know that this year’s phones aren’t expected to be very big upgrades. In fact, they’re shaping up to be a copy-paste job of last year’s Galaxy S25 lineup.
Playing it safe isn’t a new move for Samsung; it’s become the company’s go-to strategy for the last several years. As an Android fan and tech enthusiast, this lack of innovation is hard to contend with. And yet from a business perspective, it works for Samsung.
But for how long can the company keep doing this? Are we eventually going to reach a breaking point, or are Samsung customers happy to buy the same phone every year? As we creep closer to the Galaxy S26 release, I truly don’t know.
What do you think about Samsung's current Galaxy S strategy? 59 votes Samsung is playing it too safe, we need more innovative phones. 61 % I'd like more changes, but the phones are still solid. 27 % It's perfectly fine, Galaxy S phones are great. 10 % Other (let us know in the comments). 2 %
The Galaxy S26 proves that Samsung has an innovation problem
With every big Galaxy S release over the last several years, the consensus has been essentially the same: they’re good phones on their own, but frustratingly similar to their predecessors. The Galaxy S24 was a solid Android handset with many new AI features, but it lacked almost any notable hardware changes compared to the S23. The S25 was an even more tepid upgrade, with hardly any hardware or software upgrades to distinguish it from the S24.
The Galaxy S26 is expected to keep this trend going, with rumors and reports teasing a phone that’s practically identical to the S25. However, it’s one thing to say that Samsung is being lazy and another thing to see it for yourself.
The photo below is a spec comparison between the Galaxy S25 and the Galaxy S26. Although the S26’s specs aren’t confirmed, what you see below has been widely corroborated by multiple sources over the last several months. And the further down the list you get, the more depressing it becomes.
Display resolution, brightness, and refresh rate? All the same. Camera sensors? The same. Charging speed? The same. The battery? Slightly larger, but still far behind the competition. These aren’t bad specifications, but they’re not new either. And while it’s true that almost every smartphone brand reuses some specs/features across generations, the extent to which Samsung does so is particularly egregious.
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