Today, March 11, 2025, sales of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and the new Korean flagship lineup officially begin, including in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia.
I had the opportunity to try them together with Samsung Denmark during a hyggelig lunch at Restaurant Marchal, inside the Hotel d’Angleterre in the very center of Copenhagen. Let me say this right away: this first hands-on will be an experiential account, focused on the things I liked the most. I’ll refer you to another article for more technical data, while a much more in-depth review will follow soon.
Prices in Scandinavia
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra for privacy
I’ve read several articles from colleagues—mostly international ones—criticizing Samsung for not changing much, but in my opinion they focused only on the design. On the contrary, the S26 Ultra actually introduces a number of new features that may not be immediately visible, but are very clever.
For example, it’s the first smartphone to integrate a privacy display, which means that—without annoying external films—you can make the screen visible only from a perpendicular angle. Curious people on the metro or nosy colleagues will have to remain in the dark about who we’re talking to and what we’re saying—perhaps these particular “concerns” of mine reveal my Italian origins.
It also solves the issue with those aforementioned privacy films, which prevent you from taking photos from unusual angles because you can’t see what you’re framing. The mode can be activated or deactivated with a quick and intuitive swipe, and I really liked it.
I said I wouldn’t go too technical, but the reader deserves to understand how Samsung achieved this. The Galaxy S26 Ultra features a 6.9-inch Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X display with a variable refresh rate from 1 to 120Hz, a peak brightness of 2600 nits in HDR, and around 1500 nits in everyday use.
The screen architecture alternates two types of pixels, arranged in rows and columns: Narrow Pixels and Wide Pixels.
The key difference is that the Narrow pixels are recessed within a kind of physical barrier—a real container that limits the lateral dispersion of light. As a result, their light emission becomes primarily frontal.
When we activate the Privacy Display from the settings, the smartphone switches off (or drastically reduces the power of) the Wide Pixels, leaving only the Narrow Pixels to reproduce the image. Light is therefore directed almost exclusively toward the user, darkening the screen for anyone looking from a side angle.
AI that actually makes sense
The other reason why many of the new features aren’t immediately visible is because Samsung has done a huge amount of work—good work—on AI. I often feel that the term “Artificial Intelligence” is used to describe functions that are not particularly intelligent at all.
That’s not the case here. In many respects, the S26 Ultra offers features that simply help with everyday life—from a real-time translator to help you understand press conferences in France, where nobody bothers speaking English, to translating a restaurant menu simply by taking a photo.
Some of these features are not entirely new, but the difference lies in how naturally they are integrated within the One UI interface, without feeling scattered across the system or spread across sixteen different chatbots.
AI also intervenes in photo editing, which we can modify as we wish. For example, I asked it to turn the first course—a delicious potato and truffle cream—into a plate of tagliolini with truffle. Perhaps that also reveals my origins. Or I transformed the dessert, a kind of apple crumble, into a tiramisu. It works in all languages, although I noticed it understands English and Italian slightly better than Danish.
Galaxy AI, which until now had been mostly limited to classic functions like summarizing voice notes, formatting messages, or other small utilities, has now become significantly smarter.
Galaxy AI can connect to our calendar, some system applications, and also several messaging apps such as WhatsApp. For example, if someone asks us in a chat what we’re doing tomorrow afternoon, the AI automatically intervenes in the background, checks the calendar, and—if we already have an appointment—shows it directly within the Samsung keyboard.
This way we can immediately remember the commitment or, with a simple tap, share the event with the person who wrote to us. In the same way, the system can also automatically suggest quick replies to incoming messages.
All of this happens on-device, meaning locally on the smartphone, without necessarily passing through external servers. At least according to Samsung, this approach should ensure greater privacy protection.
I’ll look into this aspect more closely—as well as One UI 8.5 in general—once I’ve had the chance to test the smartphone for a longer period.
Better photos, but not radically different
There has also been some work done on the cameras. Readers of NordiskBil—especially those who bought our first magazine—know that we managed to take very high-quality print photos even with the Galaxy S25 Edge. Here we’re on another level, and the S26 Ultra also improves compared to the S25 Ultra.
Not so much in standard photos, but in contrast management in low light, where it is still able to capture a huge amount of light. The videos shot during the neon juggling performance with clubs clearly demonstrate this.
