Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority
Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series is right around the corner, and if you’ve been paying attention to the rumor mill, you probably know that this year’s phones aren’t expected to be very big upgrades. In fact, they’re shaping up to be a copy-paste job of last year’s Galaxy S25 lineup.
Playing it safe isn’t a new move for Samsung; it’s become the company’s go-to strategy for the last several years. As an Android fan and tech enthusiast, this lack of innovation is hard to contend with. And yet from a business perspective, it works for Samsung.
But for how long can the company keep doing this? Are we eventually going to reach a breaking point, or are Samsung customers happy to buy the same phone every year? As we creep closer to the Galaxy S26 release, I truly don’t know.
What do you think about Samsung’s current Galaxy S strategy?
104 votes
Samsung is playing it too safe, we need more innovative phones.
55%
I’d like more changes, but the phones are still solid.
30%
It’s perfectly fine, Galaxy S phones are great.
14%
Other (let us know in the comments).
1%
The Galaxy S26 proves that Samsung has an innovation problem
With every big Galaxy S release over the last several years, the consensus has been essentially the same: they’re good phones on their own, but frustratingly similar to their predecessors. The Galaxy S24 was a solid Android handset with many new AI features, but it lacked almost any notable hardware changes compared to the S23. The S25 was an even more tepid upgrade, with hardly any hardware or software upgrades to distinguish it from the S24.
The photo below is a spec comparison between the Galaxy S25 and the Galaxy S26. Although the S26’s specs aren’t confirmed, what you see below has been widely corroborated by multiple sources over the last several months. And the further down the list you get, the more depressing it becomes.
Display resolution, brightness, and refresh rate? All the same. Camera sensors? The same. Charging speed? The same. The battery? Slightly larger, but still far behind the competition. These aren’t bad specifications, but they’re not new either. And while it’s true that almost every smartphone brand reuses some specs/features across generations, the extent to which Samsung does so is particularly egregious.
And it’s not just that Samsung is reusing one-year-old specs on its phones; in some cases, components haven’t changed since 2022. This is most evident when you look at Samsung’s camera hardware.
The above photo shows the Galaxy S22’s camera specs compared to the rumored Galaxy S26 specs. And what do you know, they’re identical. The primary, ultrawide, and telephoto cameras are all exactly the same on a phone released in 2022 and one launching in 2026. There’s been ample smartphone camera innovation over the last four years, but if you’re a Samsung customer, you wouldn’t know it.
Like it or not, this is the path Samsung has chosen.
Further, this says nothing of Samsung’s hardware design, which has remained just as stagnant. Put a Galaxy S23, S24, and S25 side-by-side, and you’ll be hard-pressed to know which phone is which. Naturally, the Galaxy S26 lineup is expected to look almost the same as before, save for a slightly redesigned camera bump.
Like it or not, this is the path Samsung has chosen. What was once one of the most innovative and boundary-pushing brands in the business has cemented itself as one of the most boring. And as much as you and I may not like it, it’s a strategy that’s probably not going away.
Boring for me and you, but good for Samsung
Joe Maring / Android Authority
While it’s easy to point at and criticize Samsung’s stagnation, what’s fascinating is that Samsung fans seemingly don’t care — at least not enough to stop buying what Samsung is putting out. Samsung’s Galaxy S lineup delivers strong sales numbers year after year, and the Galaxy S25 has stood out as one of the best-performing yet.
It’s no secret that Samsung sells a lot of smartphones. However, the fact that the company can continue to break sales records like this without any meaningful improvement or changes to its Galaxy S lineup is what’s so noteworthy.
Most of us here at Android Authority share the view that the Galaxy S25 series is a disappointment, and reading comments on our articles about the phone, it appears that many of you, our readers, agree. And yet, the numbers tell a different story.
How long can Samsung keep doing this?
Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority
Ultimately, I think there are a couple of ways to look at the situation Samsung finds itself in.
On the one hand, it makes sense that Samsung’s Galaxy S phones sell as well as they do. Like Apple, Samsung is a big enough brand that its size and scale matter almost as much as its products. Between its name recognition, massive marketing campaigns, aggressive promotions, and wide carrier availability, it’s almost impossible not to buy a Samsung phone when shopping for a new Android handset.
That being said, you have to imagine Samsung can’t just keep coasting like this forever. Even if a large portion of people buying Samsung phones aren’t as tuned into the tech world as folks like you reading this article, there have to be enough Samsung customers noticing Samsung’s lack of effort and ambition.
Having caught on to this, will enough Samsung fans reach a breaking point and move on to something else? Or do they simply not care? Is the “normal” Samsung user happy to keep buying a Samsung-branded phone regardless of how similar it is to their previous phone?
These are questions I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since my colleague C. Scott Brown raised them on Threads, and I’m not sure what the correct answers to them are. Samsung certainly knows what it’s doing, and so far, its repeated safe bets are paying off in spades.
But in the back of my head, I can’t help but think something’s gotta give — and sooner rather than later.
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