Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus vs Galaxy S23 Plus: Main differences

The Galaxy S26 Plus boasts the same-sized 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, which boasts QHD+ resolution, up to a 120 Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 2,600 nits.

The Galaxy S23 Plus, on the other hand, came with a slightly smaller 6.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X FHD+ display, which also went to 120 Hz but could only reach 1,750 nits peak. 

One feature the Galaxy S26 Plus lacks is the new Privacy screen feature, which only comes on the Galaxy S26 Ultra and protects your sensitive information on the pixel level. No anti-reflective screen coating either –– the Galaxy S26 Plus is coasting in neutral and devoid of all the fun features. 

The Galaxy S26 Plus is set to score Gorilla Glass Armor at the front, while the Galaxy S23 Plus relied on Gorilla Glass Victus. 

Both phones feature under-display fingerprint scanners, which are faster and more accurate than optical fingerprint scanners. Picture-based face unlock is also present on both devices. 

The Galaxy S26 Plus arrives with two different chips depending on the market. The latest 3nm Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, will be used in the US, Japan, and China, while the rest of the world will get treated to the Exynos 2600 chipset. The intriguing thing about this Samsung-made silicon is that it's the first one built on a 2nm manufacturing node. 

I only hope that there's no big discrepancy in terms of performance, efficiency, or, perish the thought, image quality. We've seen all those back in the day when having Snapdragon and Exynos versions of the Galaxy flagships was the norm rather than the exception. 

The Galaxy S23 Plus, on the other hand, used the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip in all regions. Although it's definitely not the fastest chipset around these days, it's still more than decent for standard and moderate usage and would do you very well in everything but the most demanding recent games. 

The Galaxy S26 Plus arrives with 12 GB of RAM; only the Ultra can be yours with 16 GB of RAM in the 1 TB storage version. As a comparison, the Galaxy S23 Plus arrived with 8 GB of memory. 

Storage-wise, both devices share the same 256 GB and 512 GB storage options and no microSD card slots on deck. 

One UI 8.5 is the software of choice on the Galaxy S26 series, and besides seven years of software support, this one comes with many key new features, including important visual changes. It should also arrive on the Galaxy S23 Plus, eventually. 

First, the software scores a new floating app bar at the bottom, which should improve the readability. Next up, One UI 8.5 now offers even more customization options and lets you personalize the Quick Settings panel even more by reordering and removing existing controls.

If you set a picture of a person or a pet as your lock screen wallpaper, the layout will automatically move around so that neither the clock nor the widgets obscure key parts of the image. There are a few extra customization options for the lock screen clock, too.

Galaxy AI has been upgraded with continuous image generation, which lets you generate several images without stopping and pick from the ones you want afterward.

Call Screening is another new feature that will let Galaxy AI answer calls for you and see who's calling and for what reason. You will be provided with a transcript and only then decide if you want to answer the call.

Bixby can now understand you better when you talk to the assistant in your own words. This lets you use it to find specific settings or features without having to sift through numerous menus. It now has an easy way of accessing your conversation history with Bixby.

The Galaxy S26 now comes with an AI-powered screenshot analyzer, which will automatically sort your screenshots into one of eight categories. You can then find these screenshots by simply searching for said category.

The Weather app has scored a more detailed new widget that will showcase a graph of any upcoming precipitation that is expected. Your daily alarms can also show the current weather as a background when they ring, which is a neat quality-of-life upgrade.

Samsung has also enhanced the battery info menu, making it easier to check the remaining battery life left, the battery usage, as well as your charging status. There are also two power-saving modes now: Standard, which is more temperate, and Maximum, which disables all non-essential features to boost battery life.

Inspect the camera specs of the Galaxy S23 Plus, and you are pretty much looking at what the Galaxy S26 Plus has to offer as well. Consistency is great to have, but I would have loved for Samsung to at least improve one camera here. We get the same 50 MP main cameras, 12 MP ultrawides, and 10 MP telephoto cameras with 3X optical zoom on both phones. 

Sure, software optimizations and tweaking of the image-processing algorithms are more than a legit way of squeezing better quality out of the same hardware, but these can only last so long. At the four-year mark of mostly reusing the same hardware, I'm afraid that Samsung would have to commit to hardware upgrades sooner rather than later. 

The Galaxy S26 Plus comes with a 4,900 mAh battery, a small upgrade from the 4,700 mAh battery that the Galaxy S23 Plus came with. The Galaxy S26 Plus should definitely deliver better battery life thanks to the larger cell and the more efficient chips inside. At the same time, most Galaxy S23 Plus batteries would have degraded a bit by now, so the newer phone would naturally last longer on a full charge.

The Galaxy S23 Plus delivered excellent battery life, especially in the PhoneArena web browsing and gaming tests. The Galaxy S25 Plus also had decent battery life with its 4,900 mAh battery, so the hopes are absolutely high for the Galaxy S26 Plus.