Ryan Haines / Android Authority
It’s fun to be right. I love to get that warm, fuzzy feeling of satisfaction just as much as anyone — maybe it’s a sports bet that hits, an obscure fact that becomes useful, or just knowing the name of a song that’s playing without Google’s help. And this time, I feel like I’m more smugly satisfied than I have been in a while. Why? Because I guessed what Samsung would do with its Galaxy S26 design at least a generation early.
But, like all things, I have to take the bad with the good. Even though I’m thrilled that I predicted one part of Samsung’s update that will bring personality back to its flagships, I’m worried about just about everything else that might come out of Unpacked. Here’s what I think Samsung is still going to get wrong.
Much deserved kudos to the Galaxy A design team
Sky Blue
Before I get to my fears, let me take another minute to say I told you so. Maybe I only got to point it out in the Galaxy A56 review, but I noticed it a few launches earlier — Samsung’s cheapest designs almost always lead its most expensive. It began testing (or rather, retesting) the idea of a raised camera bump on the Galaxy A26 and A36, and continued the trend with the later Galaxy A56. To me, this looked like Samsung putting out feelers for how people might feel about the return of camera bumps.
Clearly, the idea was well received. Here we are, not even a year later, and the leaks are pointing to camera bumps for everyone. As Oprah would say, you get a camera bump, and you get a camera bump. If you ask me, I’ll say, thank goodness — it’s about time. After a few years of stripping away anything and everything from the Galaxy S series to the point where its flagships looked like generic designs, Samsung was in dire need of something. Literally anything would do.
I'm glad to see Samsung breaking its very generic mold, albeit just barely.
So, it seems like the design team ran a few tests. The first test, as far as I can tell, was to introduce Key Island around the power button and volume rocker on the Galaxy AX5 series. That… still hasn’t made its way beyond the budget lineup, which suggests it might not be as popular of a choice. Then again, it could just be a way to give the capacitive fingerprint reader a bit more breathing room. Either way, that one’s still in the lab.
The return of the camera bump, though, is an interesting one. On the surface, you might think that means Samsung will bring some serious updates to its sensors. After all, now it doesn’t have to sit them as far in the bodies of its flagships if it doesn’t want to. Digging deeper into some links, however, suggests that this new beauty might only be skin deep.
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