The Galaxy S26 good news is finally starting to come, but is it too little, too late?
For once, we're actually talking about a real and palpable upgrade the "vanilla" Galaxy S26 is expected to deliver. But only one... for now.
This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
If all the underwhelming or outright disheartening rumors of the last few months made you wonder why Samsung is even bothering preparing a "new" Galaxy S26 at this point, there's now a reason to actually be excited about the impending sequel to last year's pretty good "vanilla" S25.
But is this really enough to justify the existence of a device that was ironically rumored at one point to be branded Galaxy S26 Pro despite very obviously bringing no Pro-level upgrades to the table? And perhaps most importantly for Samsung, does the decidedly non-Pro S26 have what it takes to overshadow the surprisingly great and thus unsurprisingly successful "base" iPhone 17?
A storage bump does not a hit make
Here's the thing: we still don't know for sure how much the 6.3-inch Galaxy S26 is supposed to cost, and in and of itself, that makes me extremely nervous. While some industry insiders have assured us over the last few weeks that Samsung intends to "freeze" the prices of its main high-end handset family to try to keep Apple at bay, others continue to claim that the rising component costs will make that impossible (at least in some markets where a price increase might be more easily tolerated than in others).
Compared to the Galaxy S25, the S26 will definitely be better... but probably not by a whole lot. | Image Credit -- PhoneArena
With that in mind, I just don't see how a 256GB S26 could possibly retain the $799 price tag of the 128GB Galaxy S25 in the US, for instance, and if that doesn't happen, Samsung will enter the battle against the $799 and up iPhone 17 with a clear disadvantage.
Now, would an $849 or so Galaxy S26 with 256 gigs of internal storage space represent an improvement over a $799 S25 with half that local digital hoarding room? Definitely, but it's also crystal clear that the S26 needs other (ideally, more substantial) upgrades too if it wants to be taken seriously as an iPhone 17 alternative.
The 6.3-inch iPhone 17, mind you, changed a lot more about its 6.1-inch predecessor than just the base storage (and processor), enlarging and improving the Super Retina display with 120Hz refresh rate technology, enhancing the rear and front-facing camera performance in big ways, and somehow even increasing the battery endurance scores of its forerunner.
Do you plan to buy the Galaxy S26?
All that made me label the non-Pro and non-Air iPhone 17 as the best Apple handset released last fall, and more than four months in, I stand by my initial view... while preparing to deem the non-Plus and non-Ultra Galaxy S26 the most disappointing device Samsung will probably unveil next month.
Can a last-minute miracle save the Galaxy S26?
Normally, I'd answer that question with a resounding no mere weeks ahead of an Unpacked event. But something seems different this year, and I can't help but feel that Samsung might be... withholding something until the eleventh hour.
After all, we still haven't seen the S26 in the flesh (or the S26 Plus, or the S26 Ultra, for that matter), which is highly unusual, and in addition to the pricing structure, a few other key details are either unknown or not completely etched in stone yet.
This is how the Galaxy S26 is expected to look, but nothing is certain until it's certain.
Call me naive if you want, but following the recent back-and-forth between a couple of different leakers on the charging speed topic, I continue to hope that the Galaxy S26 will jump from its predecessor's 25W support to 45W after all.
Similarly, I can't help but sense that we don't have the full story on camera performance, battery life, and maybe even the design just yet, and once all that information comes out, we'll be able to say that the Galaxy S26 is to the S25 what the iPhone 17 is to the iPhone 16.
In short, to answer my own question in the title of this editorial, yes, a base storage upgrade from 128 to 256GB would be (far) too little to justify the existence of the Galaxy S26 and make Samsung confident of its box-office potential, but no, it's not too late for the world's second-largest smartphone vendor to surprise us with other major improvements. And no, I don't mean things like a Galaxy S25 Edge-style weight and thickness reduction, but true user experience-enhancing upgrades.
I still believe in you, Samsung, but my patience (as well as that of many other millions of prospective buyers) will soon run out.
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