Samsung to Upgrade Only One Galaxy S26 Ultra Camera… Barely

by · Android Headlines

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra rumors have been all over the place. Some rumors said there won’t be any camera upgrades, while others teased unrealistic upgrades. Well, a new one has just appeared, saying that Samsung will make only one change to the camera hardware of the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Samsung could make some camera changes to the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but minor ones

The information comes from ‘yawn’, a tipster, who shared the information on X. Out of all the cameras on the phone, only the telephoto one will get an upgrade, it seems. That’s in line with one previous rumor.

The main camera will still be a 200-megapixel ISOCELL HP2 unit. A 50-megapixel ultrawide camera will remain, with the ISOCELL JN3 sensor. Samsung will also retain the 50-megapixel IMX854 periscope telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom.

The 10-megapixel telephoto unit will get an upgrade, however. Samsung is aiming to use a 12-megapixel ISOCELL S5K3LD sensor for that camera and provide 3x optical zoom to users. That will replace the 10-megapixel 3x telephoto camera that has been around since the Galaxy S21 Ultra.

Wider apertures for main and periscope telephoto cameras could be included too

Do note that the main camera and the periscope camera could end up offering wider apertures this time around. That’s also just a rumor at this point, and it conflicts with some other information, so… we’ll have to wait and see.

These do seem like rather minor improvements. There are quite a few phones out there that will have better and newer camera hardware than the Galaxy S26 Ultra, if this ends up being the case.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 series, including the ‘Ultra’ model, is said to utilize a dual chip strategy. Qualcomm said that around 75% of Galaxy S26 series units will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, while the remaining 25% are expected to utilize the Exynos 2600 chip.

All three phones are tipped to arrive in Q1 next year. They were initially expected to launch in January, but based on the latest information, February 25 could be the launch date.