The Galaxy Z Fold 7 might be an impressive piece of design, but with one obvious shortcoming: its massive camera bump. With next year’s Galaxy S26 Ultra, Samsung could be bringing that design to its standard phablet, without any noticeable changes to its sensor lineup.
Noted leaker Ice Universe shared some details surrounding Samsung’s plans for its next-gen flagship camera on Twitter. In a render showing off the Galaxy S26 Ultra from its profile view, we get measurements for both the phone itself and its protruding camera bump. While this leak indicates Samsung has managed to slim down next year’s smartphone to just 7.9mm — compared to the S25 Ultra’s 8.2mm chassis — it apparently comes at the cost of this massive new camera bump.
Ice Universe notes that the camera lenses on this year’s flagship stuck out from its glass back by about 2.4mm. In comparison, Samsung is apparently nearly doubling that number on next year’s phone, with its new module elevated away from the chassis by a whopping 4.5mm. That means, at its thickest point, the Galaxy S26 ultra could measure in at 12.4mm thick, compared to 10.6mm on the Galaxy S25 Ultra and around 12mm thick on the Pixel 9 and Pixel 10.
On its own, that’s not necessarily a bad change. Larger camera bumps typically indicate better — or, at least, larger — sensors. But Ice Universe also notes that, in this case, it seems more like Samsung’s prepping for an eventual upgrade rather than supplying its customers with one next year. The leaker says next year’s telephoto sensor will remain a 1/2.52-inch 50MP lens, which, as he points out, could be “the smallest telephoto sensor in a global flagship” when the S26 series launches next year.
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Samsung is a slow-moving behemoth, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that a redesigned camera bump could appear without the improved space constraints actually being utilized. It’s also a company that loves a single, unified design across all of its products; it’s why the Galaxy A16, when looked at from the back, doesn’t look all that different from the Galaxy S25. It’s hard not to notice the newly-redesigned camera module here looks practically identical to the one found on the Galaxy Z Fold 7, a device that required this sort of design thanks to its ultra-slim chassis. The same excuse doesn’t apply here, but that might not stop Samsung from employing it on next year’s non-folding flagship anyway.
If the Galaxy S26 Ultra does arrive with this design, expect it to lay as unstable as the Fold 7 does on a table when using the device without a case. Samsung could always rotate its camera lineup to the right to match Google’s rock-solid approach to massive camera bars, or utilize an Apple-like elevated design as it appears to be doing on the S26 Edge. Based on every leak we’ve seen so far, though it’s not in the cards for the next-gen Ultra.
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