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Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

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Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#41

Post by close04 »

josalhor wrote: post #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.

The people who are genuinely concerned about shoulder surfing probably slapped on a privacy filter anyway. They're no different from a screen protector. What the S26 Ultra can do is cool and super useful for the few people who need it, but I'd bet that all the rest will just show it off as a cool party trick and nothing more.

I've seen this with laptops that came with integrated electronically controlled privacy filter. They were nice but eventually the added cost, complexity, and lowered image quality didn't make them a popular choice even for enterprise users. I think only HP still offers them from the big brands, Dell and Lenovo don't do it anymore.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#42

Post by SchemaLoad »

rchard2scout wrote: post #39

> if you don't want any of these AI capabilities, you can spend a few minutes disabling and getting rid of most of them. Why is this "a few minutes" and "most of them"? Why isn't it "a few seconds" and "all of them with a single toggle in Settings"?

Samsung has never respected the user. I remember having having a Galaxy S5 and every update it would reinstall all the bloatware like facebook and paypal. Everyone who cares about a platform that respects them and their time moved to iPhone long ago. Apple's AI features can be turned off with one global toggle, as well as more granular ones.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#43

Post by SchemaLoad »

ariwilson wrote: post #31
automatic6131 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't believe these geekbench numbers represent real world performance numbers. Like... Firefox compile times or late game civ 6 turn times or such things

yes because a phone cpu cannot cool itself to keep at peak performance like a desktop processor can

It's not clear the android geekbench scores are comparable to the desktop ones. They seem to run different tests and the score is very likely not comparable between the different tests.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#44

Post by lostlogin »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #42
rchard2scout wrote: post #39

> if you don't want any of these AI capabilities, you can spend a few minutes disabling and getting rid of most of them. Why is this "a few minutes" and "most of them"? Why isn't it "a few seconds" and "all of them with a single toggle in Settings"?

Samsung has never respected the user. I remember having having a Galaxy S5 and every update it would reinstall all the bloatware like facebook and paypal. Everyone who cares about a platform that respects them and their time moved to iPhone long ago. Apple's AI features can be turned off with one global toggle, as well as more granular ones.

> Apple's AI features can be turned off with one global toggle, as well as more granular ones.

I’m an Apple user. Turn off Siri and CarPlay gets painful from memory, and my AirPods won’t translate without it turned on.

In terms of privacy, they are slipping. The dialogs ‘ask apps not to track’, and don’t appear to block them. Watching Tim surrender to authority at ever at every opportunity makes me sad.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#45

Post by SchemaLoad »

eigenspace wrote: post #35
TheRoque wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Theyre not polarized, the pixels are recessed so that the light only goes forward

I wonder if this is how those privacy screen protectors work. Where it's just like looking at the screen through a cell structure with walls that prevent light coming out at an angle.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#46

Post by SchemaLoad »

lostlogin wrote: post #44
SchemaLoad wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung has never respected the user. I remember having having a Galaxy S5 and every update it would reinstall all the bloatware like facebook and paypal. Everyone who cares about a platform that respects them and their time moved to iPhone long ago. Apple's AI features can be turned off with one global toggle, as well as more granular ones.

> Apple's AI features can be turned off with one global toggle, as well as more granular ones. I’m an Apple user. Turn off Siri and CarPlay gets painful from memory, and my AirPods won’t translate without it turned on. In terms of privacy, they are slipping. The dialogs ‘ask apps not to track’, and don’t appear to block them. Watching Tim surrender to authority at ever at every opportunity makes me sad.

I mean that's what you'd expect turning off the whole of siri. They provide granular options to turn off individual aspects like the listening for "hey siri" and such. If you wholesale disable the entirety of siri you are going to find it annoying if you use features provided by siri.

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#47

Post by 2postsperday »

malfist wrote: post #10
throwa356262 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove your Samsung account. It is needed for a bunch of things including all bixby stuff (which is admittedly starting to get useful) but those constant ToS updates can drive a man mad. If any Samsung employees are reading this: whoever is pushing those ToS changes is probably a on Apples payroll ;)

If I sign out, samsung nukes step tracking and basically neuters my watch's health metrics.

[flagged]

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#48

Post by 2postsperday »

freedomben wrote: post #36
zugi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of free or cheap alternative apps. Probably not as smoothly integrated, but years ago a change to Samsung's terms popped up in the health app; I saw it said they could do anything they want with my private health data, so I rejected the terms and stopped using it.

It blows my mind that Samsung has been sitting on a premium hardware gold mine for so long, but insists on these anti-features. I would be buying expensive premium samsung phones if they just offered something not so maddening. I was so hoping (but certainly not holding my breath) that Samsung was GrapheneOS's partner. Oh well, I guess S doesn't want my money, so I'll give it Moto.

[flagged]

Re: Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

#49

Post by LtWorf »

observationist wrote: post #29
josalhor wrote: post #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.

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 cash…

My card has 2fa. I can display it but it won't work to pay unless I stick it into a reader, type my PIN and copy a code.
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