Galaxy S26: five reasons to get Samsung’s base model flagship instead of the S26 Ultra

There are many reasons to get excited about the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but what about the base model Galaxy S26? Is Samsung going to make its base model flagship worth the upgrade next year, or is all of the cool stuff reserved for the Ultra models?

As it turns out, there’s plenty to look forward to with the Galaxy S26. Here are five reasons why the base model S26 might be a better bang for your buck than the S26 Ultra next year.

A bigger battery

Though the battery on the Ultra models has stagnated for years, the base model Galaxy flagships have continued to see incremental improvements. This trend will reportedly continue next year, and the Galaxy S26 will feature a battery capacity of 4,300 mAh instead of 4,000 mAh like its predecessor.

The return of Exynos

To complement the larger battery, it’s all but confirmed that the Galaxy S26 line is returning to Samsung’s in-house Exynos processors. The 2 nm Exynos 2600 is excellent, and it blows current Snapdragon chips out of the water.

It’s so good, in fact, that even the Galaxy S26 Ultra is allegedly going to be using it in certain regions. This means that the base model Galaxy S26 is going to be a lot more powerful than the Galaxy S25, and it will likely be more battery efficient because of the 2 nm architecture as well.

A bigger and better display

Also in line with the tradition of gradual upgrades each generation, the Galaxy S26 is expected to feature an ever-so-slightly larger display. The Galaxy S25 has a 6.2 inch display, and the Galaxy S26 is expected to go up to 6.3 inches.

More importantly, however, the Galaxy S26 might be able to push the peak brightness up to 3,000 nits, instead of the 2,600 nits on the Galaxy S25. This is because of a new material being used for its OLED screen. However, reports on this are still conflicted, and Samsung might just keep the phone capped at 2,600 nits of brightness.

It will be even slimmer

Furthermore, while the Galaxy S26 Edge might be canceled, the base model Galaxy S26 will prove that Samsung is still obsessed with slimming its phones down each year.

The Galaxy S25 is already at a pretty respectable 7.2 mm of thickness, but the Galaxy S26 is apparently going to be only 6.9 mm. That’s barely over a millimeter thicker than the Galaxy S25 Edge, which was marketed around the fact that it was super slim at 5.8 mm.

However, the Galaxy S26 might be a couple of grams heavier than the Galaxy S25, though you’d be hard-pressed to notice the difference.

A better camera! Well…maybe

All reports up till now had pointed at a camera upgrade for the Galaxy S26. If true, then the phone would have been notably better than its predecessor in yet another aspect. We can still hope that a camera upgrade is in the works, but it’s seeming unlikely now.

A new report alleges that Samsung has decided to reuse the cameras from the Galaxy S25 to keep the price tag the same. Rising component costs across the industry are forcing phone manufacturers to inflate their prices, and this might be the only way to stop a price hike for the Galaxy S26.

But, if the camera upgrade does happen, then that will be another reason to just get the base Galaxy S26 over the Galaxy S26 Ultra next year.