Galaxy S27 buyers need only one upgrade, but Samsung plans to disappoint them

We may be facing one more year of barely noticeable hardware upgrades for at least some of the best smartphones offered by Samsung. While there are rumors about nice improvements for the Galaxy S27 Ultra and the rumored Galaxy S27 Pro, fans of the vanilla Galaxy S27 should prepare for another year of disappointment.

Everyone wants a better battery and camera on their phone, but Samsung won’t listen

Samsung is very unlikely to introduce meaningful upgrades to the vanilla Galaxy S27. Rumor has it that the company will stick to largely the same display and battery, and even the camera system won’t see a significant upgrade. That would make the upcoming base model the sixth generation in a row with largely the same camera specs.

This move is contrary to what the vast majority of people would like to see in a new smartphone, at least according to a recent poll we ran. We asked you what upgrade would make you opt for Samsung’s vanilla flagship, and the answers were far from surprising.

Close to 43% of you said that a better battery would tip the scales in favor of the Galaxy S27. Another 27% chose a better camera as the reason to upgrade to Samsung’s upcoming base model. Put in other words, over two-thirds of you would pick the vanilla flagship if Samsung gave you a meaningful improvement to its basics.



Of course, there are 5% of you who would prefer to get an even better display, while a little over 6% would be happy with only a bump to the chipset and memory. These answers are proof that Samsung’s flagships are still excellent phones, but apparently not good enough for everyone.

Samsung’s strategy is actually working

An easy speculation about Samsung’s strategy is that it doesn’t add big upgrades to its cheaper flagships to make people opt for the Ultra models. Considering that close to 19% of you have said that no upgrade would make them get the vanilla Galaxy S27 because they’re getting a Galaxy S27 Ultra, such a move could be working.

Of course, that would be the case if the top-tier models didn’t also come with relatively small annual upgrades. Because of this, an annual upgrade would only make sense if you moved from a vanilla Galaxy S26 to a Galaxy S27 Ultra. That’s a long-term upselling strategy I can easily believe is part of Samsung’s plans.

This year it’s all about the price

Considering the raging memory and component cost crisis, I expect people to be ready to accept many more compromises than before as long as that leads to lower prices for their favorite devices. Even then, bumping the battery capacity shouldn’t be such an issue, and I can only hope that Samsung finally does it.

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