Galaxy S26 Ultra Privacy Display proves there’s still room for hardware innovation in phones

In 2026, we feel like we’ve seen it all in phones, right? Powerful processors, unreasonable amounts of RAM, incredible displays, wild designs, and even foldable phones.

Granted, there’s still room to grow in that foldable / rollable / who-knows-what-follows segment. But the ordinary “chocobar” phone hasn’t surprised us recently.

What is the Galaxy S26 Ultra Privacy Display?

At its core, it’s inspired by privacy screen protectors — glass panels with limited viewing angles, so whenever you have one on your phone, anyone looking at your screen from the side will see nothing but black.

The issue with privacy screen protectors is that they degrade your image and make it hard when trying to show photos to friends, or even when enjoying your content on your own.

Well, Samsung had a thought — what if we integrate the privacy aspect within the screen panel and make it possible to toggle it on and off at will?

How does it work?

Within a Galaxy S26 Ultra panel, there is a black grid that surrounds some of the pixels. Yes, thin and precise, this is a very complex build. When Privacy Display is not toggled on, said grid is lowered, and nothing feels different.



However, when you choose to turn Privacy Display on, the grid is raised slightly. As a result, the screen’s viewing angles get severely reduced.

There’s yet another toggle, Maximum Privacy Protection, which turns some of the display’s pixels off. This enhances the effect even further, at the cost of display vibrancy and contrast.

But it’s assumed that if you are looking at something sensitive, like your banking app, PIN number, or private chat, you don’t care about contrast at the moment.

The best part - it can be automated

Since Privacy Display is baked into the Samsung panel and controlled by the Samsung software, you can fine-tune One UI to automate it. Within the Privacy Display settings screen, you can tell the phone to toggle it on whenever you open a specific app.



So, as mentioned above, you can have it auto-engage every time you open your e-banking, which makes perfect sense for a feature like this.

Additionally, the black grid can only be engaged in a certain area of a display. I have it turned on for notifications — the screen literally reduces the viewing angles around notification bubbles every time they come in.



No matter whether I am on a train or in the store, nobody can see my chat messages with an accidental glimpse off from the side.

I also have Privacy Display set to always engage when I open my digital wallet for mobile payments. I just don’t want to accidentally flash my account balance to anyone in the store, and that feature gives me some extra peace of mind.

Of course, use common sense. But also, use my special privacy booster hack, outlined below.

Extra tip: use Samsung Routines

As I mentioned above, you can definitely set up Privacy Display to turn on automatically for specific apps — it’s an easy toggle within the Privacy Display section of Settings.

However, I found that the blackening effect is further improved if you lower your screen’s brightness. So, I cooked up a specific routine for my banking app.

Go into Settings -> Modes & Routines -> Routines. Create a new routine.



In the “If” section, select event “App opened” and mark your banking app. Press done.



In the “Then” section, choose “Add”, look up Display -> Privacy Display and choose to have it “On”, “Maximum Privacy Protection”.



One more time, in the “Then” section, press “Add action” and go to Display -> Brightness. Choose the target brightness by using the slider.

I set it down to 7% — I find this brightness level is still plenty visible to me thanks to the anti-reflective properties of the Gorilla Armor 2 screen. Yet, it enhances the effectiveness of Privacy Display quite noticeably.

By default, everything should be back to normal when you leave the app. If it’s not, check your “When routine ends” conditions.

What’s next?

By all accounts, it seems like the Privacy Display is a complex and expensive feature to build into the phone. Which is why it will probably be an exclusive to the Ultra line for a good while.

Will someone else try to do it as well? But it’s a huge undertaking, and we do know that Samsung has the vertical integration (Samsung Electronics, Samsung Display) to make it possible. Others? Not so much. But time will tell.