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Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

wired.com

21–30 of 57 posts

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#21

This phone costs 1700 euros here... 1700 (Netherlands)! That is the price of a gaming laptop! Everything has become so incredibly expensive it just isn't fun to buy anything anymore. My iPhone 11's FaceID broke a few weeks ago and despite that I think I will just stick with it with today's phone prices.

> 1700 euros Right, thats the top specced 1TB version isnt it? Amazon Germany has the basic 256g version for 1200€

Still a phone for over 1000€ is crazy. Iphone 17 is much cheaper, and iphones are supposed to be the most expensive smartphones in my book.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#22
People use their phone today to: Manage 100k+,1M+ bank accounts, 2FA, secret messaging, sensitive media, medication, credentials and more. This privacy feature makes a lot of sense. Give it a couple of iterations and I think this will be the standard in business. It never made sense to me the trust that we put on no one looking at the contents of a display at the same time as us.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#23

I was hoping, this being Wired, the article would have at least a surface-level technical description of how a software-defined privacy filter works, but alas. How does it work? I'm guessing it's some kind of extension of the LCD polarizer, but all I can find online are explanations of the software like in the Wired article.

Basically half of the pixels have a narrow view angle, the others don't, when you activate the privacy mode, only the narrow pixels remain, so you can see the screen only looking straight.

I got this explanation for the mkbh video: https://youtu.be/nfHRMqqO578?t=141&si=iEhVrdCuLN0fkasd which illustrates it very well (2m24 if timestamp doesn't work)

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#24

I was hoping, this being Wired, the article would have at least a surface-level technical description of how a software-defined privacy filter works, but alas. How does it work? I'm guessing it's some kind of extension of the LCD polarizer, but all I can find online are explanations of the software like in the Wired article.

Its not a filter or layer, its the pixels themselves. Half are normal wide viewing angle pixels, the other half are pixels with a much more narrow viewing angle. When activated they just ... switch off the normal ones.

See for example:

https://gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s26_ultra-review-2939p3....

Or from the official Samsung presentation:

https://youtube.com/shorts/qnUVGPkeCCc

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#25

How's the dex? It's close to the only thing I miss from samsungs, which I used good 15 years I guess before hopping onto grapheneos.

Still not great, I'm using it on my S23 and I would compare it to a 2010-era Linux WM.

It's good enough to use on the go I'd say but not beyond that.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1700 euros Right, thats the top specced 1TB version isnt it? Amazon Germany has the basic 256g version for 1200€

Still a phone for over 1000€ is crazy. Iphone 17 is much cheaper, and iphones are supposed to be the most expensive smartphones in my book.

Are these comments from 2018? 'Pro' models of iPhones have been $999 or more, not adjusted for inflation, at their lowest tier since 'Pro' has been a thing. I would expect the same of a Samsung 'Ultra' flagship?

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#27

People use their phone today to: Manage 100k+,1M+ bank accounts, 2FA, secret messaging, sensitive media, medication, credentials and more. This privacy feature makes a lot of sense. Give it a couple of iterations and I think this will be the standard in business. It never made sense to me the trust that we put on no one looking at the contents of a display at the same time as us.

I'm much less concerned about a rando looking over my shoulder than I am the wealth of information the software hands out to its owners. It's like the difference between being seen in public by other pedestrians versus being captured by thousands of fixed surveillance cameras. Look all you want, so long as you're not wired into a database. Different threat models, I guess.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#28

This phone costs 1700 euros here... 1700 (Netherlands)! That is the price of a gaming laptop! Everything has become so incredibly expensive it just isn't fun to buy anything anymore. My iPhone 11's FaceID broke a few weeks ago and despite that I think I will just stick with it with today's phone prices.

[deleted]

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#29

People use their phone today to: Manage 100k+,1M+ bank accounts, 2FA, secret messaging, sensitive media, medication, credentials and more. This privacy feature makes a lot of sense. Give it a couple of iterations and I think this will be the standard in business. It never made sense to me the trust that we put on no one looking at the contents of a display at the same time as us.

Or displaying your card out in the open, flashing it in front of everyone in the restaurant, grocery store, etc. With remote workers scanning through video feeds of people in public, it won't be long before they figure out the Meta glasses and similar cameras are high enough resolution to capture sensitive information, even if the actual user is 100% innocent and not doing anything wrong.

There was a gas station cashier that was using a memory palace trick to memorize card numbers and details, then stealing money later on. The bar was one of a little effort - not many people can do the memory palace thing, so it wasn't a threat vector. Now, everything is being recorded all the time, and you basically have to trust that everyone in the long list of people who have access to the video won't use it maliciously. We absolutely don't live in the type of society where that type of trust is warranted - there's gonna be lots of crime from unexpected places.

Throw in capturing logins, secure pins, touchscreen swipe sequences, etc, it won't even matter if you have all the best security features in the world.

Maybe implanted cryptographic key devices are the way to go, and you have to go into a perfectly secure SCIF with a faraday shielded closet in order to enter in your personal key, which can be used to provide tokens for other logins, verify actions, etc.

The world is so ridiculously insecure.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#30
post #19

This phone costs 1700 euros here... 1700 (Netherlands)! That is the price of a gaming laptop! Everything has become so incredibly expensive it just isn't fun to buy anything anymore. My iPhone 11's FaceID broke a few weeks ago and despite that I think I will just stick with it with today's phone prices.

What gaming laptop?

Like these: https://www.coolblue.nl/en/laptops/gaming-laptops/filter/pri...
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