As 2025 draws to a close, we’re now looking at phones from 2026, and the Samsung Galaxy S26 series could be among the first, with a recent leak suggesting they could be unveiled in January.
Thanks to other leaks and rumors, we also have an idea of what to expect from it, but that’s not what this article is about. This is about what we can expect from them, and it’s a mix of the likely and the highly unlikely, but none of this would be unrealistic for a flagship phone.
From better batteries to more megapixels and more, here’s what we expect from the Samsung Galaxy S26 series.
1. A silicon-carbon battery
Samsung Galaxy S25
It seems like every year new Chinese phones come with higher capacity batteries, and lately that has been even more true as many have switched to silicon-carbon batteries, which allow for higher capacity without increasing the size of the battery.
But Samsung hasn’t made this change and the company is really falling behind when it comes to battery capacity. In fact, even other competitors such as Google and Apple – which have yet to make this change – are starting to offer phones with higher capacity batteries than Samsung.
For some reason, Samsung doesn’t seem willing to go beyond 5,000mAh on their phones, but for the Galaxy S26 series and especially the Galaxy S26 Ultra, we’d like to see the battery reach new heights. Ideally, a silicon-carbon construction would be used for this purpose as this would allow for greater gains with minimal impact on the phone’s thickness.
Will this happen? Probably not. There is no indication that Samsung has introduced silicon-carbon batteries here or that it plans to equip these phones with a battery larger than 5,000 mAh. But the Samsung Galaxy S26 could at least benefit from a slight boost, as one report indicates a 4,300mAh battery, compared to the Samsung Galaxy S25’s 4,000mAh.
2. A 10x telephoto lens
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
Samsung’s Ultra phones were once the kings of telephoto lenses, surpassing all their competitors thanks to their 10x optical zoom. But then Samsung made a strange decision: they replaced these phones with a 5x optical zoom.
Now they still have what Samsung calls a 10x “optical quality” zoom lens, but this is achieved by cropping the sensor, meaning the actual sensor size is smaller and the megapixel count is lower, so optical quality yes, but it’s the optical quality you’d get from a much lower end camera.
Additionally, many competing phones also offer 5x optical zoom and often their own “optical quality” options, so Samsung has really lost its edge here.
That’s why we’d like to see a return to 10x optical zoom on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra – there’s already a separate 3x zoom camera in case you don’t want to zoom that far. This would give us the best of both worlds and allow Samsung to reclaim the camera zoom crown.
However, this is unlikely to happen as most rumors suggest that there will be little or no changes to the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra’s cameras and nothing to the 5x zoom.
3. Faster charging
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
Capacity isn’t the only aspect of batteries where Samsung lags, as the company continues to limit charging power to fairly low levels. For example, the Samsung Galaxy S25 has a maximum output of 25W, and even the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra can only charge at 45W, giving both phones only 15W of wireless charging.
To give you an idea of how much better it can get, the recently launched OnePlus 15 can support 120W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, so Samsung has some ground to make up.
Fortunately, it seems the company is taking at least one small step in the right direction. Some reports suggest that the Galaxy S26 Ultra may feature 60W wired charging and 25W wireless charging. Although we are still not where we would like to be, it would still be a start.
4. Same chipset everywhere
Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus
A curious quirk of the Samsung Galaxy S line is that different regions often have different chipsets, and Samsung splits these between the in-house Exynos range and the more common Qualcomm Snapdragon models.
This usually means that some countries get slightly inferior versions of phones, as one chipset is almost inevitably better than the other, and Snapdragon models tend to come out on top.
That’s why we want to put an end to this practice so that buyers in some regions don’t get worse deals than others.
Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen, as reports suggest that a combination of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and Exynos 2600 chipset will be used this time around, although leaks suggest that this Exynos model could at least be a better match for Snapdragon than most years.
5. More megapixels
Samsung Galaxy S25
While some cameras in the Samsung Galaxy S25 series have many megapixels, others do not. For example, the 3x telephoto lens on all models is only 10MP, while the ultra-wide camera on the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus is only 12MP.
Given the high price of these phones, that’s not a problem, and while megapixels aren’t the only factor in taking pictures, we can’t say these sensors are special in any other way.
So we’d like to see an update to the Samsung Galaxy S26 series, preferably with more megapixels as it’s an easy feature to market, but if Samsung can also offer bigger sensors, all the better.
Will this happen? Well, there’s some disagreement among speakers as to what Samsung has planned for the cameras, but we’ve heard rumors that the 12MP ultra-wide lens could be bumped up to 50MP and the 10MP telephoto lens could see a slight bump to 12MP, so there’s a chance at least some of the sensors will be better this time around.