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8 / 10 Score Cnet Score CNET provides expert, unbiased reviews of products and services. When we assign a score, we use a scale of 1-10. Each product we score is evaluated by criteria specific to its category with most assessing pricing, quality, features and performance. Read more on: How we test Samsung Galaxy S26 Pros Good cameras
Clean, modern phone design
Fun, even useful AI perks Cons $100 price hike not worth extra storage
25W wired charging is comparatively slow
Nearly all upgrades are to software, not hardware
The Samsung Galaxy S26 is a mix of fantastic innovations and idleness, with ready evidence of Samsung's odd balance in picking which components to upgrade and which to let tread water. It's understandable that Samsung might hold back some of its fancier improvements for the higher-tier phones, but it leaves its baseline model with some awkward shortfalls that persist year over year.
This has kept the Galaxy S26 in a state of arrested development for years, which would be weird if it weren't so expected. The base model's charging rate hasn't sped up in six years, since the Galaxy S20. Upgrades are piecemeal over its predecessor, unless you count AI features that come to every S26 phone and some of the earlier ones via software update. While there is a good amount of new AI tricks to try out, the overt emphasis on software over upgrading hardware makes me wonder what exactly makes the S26 worth buying over its predecessor.
That answer is compounded by another update -- this time to the price, as the myriad challenges besetting the phone industry have finally pushed Samsung to bump up the Galaxy S26 to $900, up from $800 for its predecessor, last year's Galaxy S25. It's hard to hold it against Samsung, as the RAM shortage and other persisting issues have led analysts to predict that many phones in 2026 will get more expensive. The S25 line is still on sale but hasn't received a price decrease.
This year's Galaxy is pricier but also more feature-packed than the baseline phones have ever been -- meaning there are fewer exclusive perks in the $1,100 Galaxy S26 Plus and not as many reasons to pick the more expensive phone beyond faster charging and a larger display. This also makes the Galaxy S26 Ultra a better deal by comparison, as it's stayed at $1,300 for all its extensive bells and whistles, including sharper cameras, the S Pen stylus and the fancy new Privacy Display feature.
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