Samsung is tipped to unveil its Galaxy S26 series tomorrow, at its next Galaxy Unpacked event in San Francisco. But we’ve got a sneak peek of the S26 ultra already, courtesy of the Independent Photographers Association on Weibo. The new phone is photographed on the front and back, and the images clearly show Samsung’s new design for The S26 Ultra’s camera island. Though the positioning of each lens follows the same layout as previous Ultra phones, the camera bump is now far more pronounced around the three main lenses. This is similar to the S25 Edge‘s camera island design, and as likely due to Samsung slimming down the rest of the phone chassis. The camera bump now looks thick, relative to the rest of the phone, but the thickness of the bump is probably no greater than that of the S25 Ultra. Even so, the result can hardly be called elegant: it looks more ‘wart’ than ‘island’, at least to my eyes.
(Image credit: Independent Photographers Association / Weibo)
This new leak also specifies the exact camera hardware that’ll be in the S26 Ultra: Samsung’s venerable 200MP HP2 sensor is back again for the primary camera, teamed with a 50MP ultra-wide module, a 10MP telephoto lens with 3x zoom, and a 50MP periscope telephoto camera. Elsewhere, the phone is predicted to sport a 6.9-inch 2K display, Snapdragon 8E5 SoC running at 4.74GHz, and a 5000mAh batter. These camera specs match what’s been reported in previous rumors and leaks, so at this late stage we’ve got little reason to suspect the S26 Ultra will emerge with any surprise new camera hardware.