Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review: Privacy screen

Better yet, because it’s built-in, you can customize it when you turn on the privacy screen through the software. Mine is automatically activated with selected messaging, banking, and notification apps, and there is no visual indicator when looking directly at the phone that the privacy screen is enabled or not (unless you tilt the screen slightly).

You still can See The screen from the sides with Privacy View enabled, becomes very dim and the content is difficult to understand. For maximum effect, you can turn on Max Privacy Protection via the quick settings menu, which makes it nearly impossible to read the screen from the sides. You don’t want to use this mode all the time because the screen looks dim, but it’s useful when you want to be more private. Oddly enough, Samsung does not allow you to configure this additional layer to turn on automatically with certain applications, but rather switches manually each time.

I’ve seen some complaints online about the privacy screen affecting the screen quality, but I have to disagree. Then again, the first thing I did when setting up the phone was increase the screen resolution to Quad HD+ and also set the colors to Vivid. I didn’t see any fuzzy text, and brightness wasn’t an issue for me either.

Yes, you can buy a cheap privacy screen protector and add it to any phone, but sometimes you can He does You want the person next to you — whether a friend or family member — to be able to read the screen next to you. Or maybe the phone is on the table, and you want to lazily browse TikTok while you try to keep an eye on work. This is where a standard privacy screen protector won’t help you, as it prevents you from seeing your own screen, but Samsung’s solution gets around that. Now, I wish every smartphone had a privacy screen.

You don’t have to do anything illegal or highly sensitive to justify having this feature. Maybe you want your conversation with a loved one to be private. Maybe you’re authenticating your login and don’t want anyone else to see the code. Or you open your banking app, and don’t want anyone snooping into your checking account. It’s good to have privacy.

Phone

Photo: Julian Chocato

Samsung has made its Ultra smartphone look more like the standard Galaxy S26 and S26+, with rounded corners instead of the boxy look of its predecessors. (It’s still the only device out of the lot with a built-in S Pen.) The overall design language is still pretty dull, and the phone’s muted colors aren’t exciting (you can buy the iPhone 17 Pro in orange for crying out loud!).