Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra to continue trend of disappointing batteries

Another Galaxy, another 5,000 mAh battery.

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Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra rear
While the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is still ages away, it’s not too early to burst your bubble if you were hoping for battery improvements. Keeping in line with its tradition of taking it extremely slow with battery innovations, Samsung does not intend to use a big battery in its next Ultra phone.

A very reliable industry source — especially when it comes to news about upcoming Samsung products — confirmed that the Galaxy S26 Ultra will also have a disappointing battery. The phone will very likely come with yet another 5,000 mAh battery. And, if Samsung does increase the battery capacity, it will most definitely stay under 5,400 mAh.

Samsung is taking it very slow with improving the batteries on its phones, in my opinion. I know that the Galaxy Note 7 disaster probably still haunts Samsung, but the company’s competitors are stepping things up a notch. We have now seen various Chinese phones that have batteries as big as 7,000 mAh, usually using new dense battery technologies.

Unfortunately, it seems that Samsung does not see the importance of improved battery life. The new Galaxy S25 Edge only has a battery capacity of 3,900 mAh, something that a Samsung executive defended in a recent interview.


Chinese phone manufacturers using better batteries nowadays — like Xiaomi and Oppo — are not too popular in the U.S. Because of this, Samsung, Apple, and Google are taking their sweet time bringing better batteries to their products. For example, instead of using denser batteries, Apple is apparently planning to announce battery optimization using Apple Intelligence.

In addition to disappointing battery capacity, the Galaxy S26 Ultra will also retain its slow charging speeds, according to the source. The phone will likely stick to the tried and tested 45W of wired charging, which pales in comparison to Chinese phones that can go up to 120W for wired charging.

Like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, Apple is also working on an iPhone 17 Air that it will announce later this year. As if this new obsession with slim phones with tiny batteries wasn’t bad enough, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is reportedly going to have a measly 4,400 mAh battery as well.
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