The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is a balanced flagship phone, but can it compete with Ultra-branded camera phones from China? To find out, I pitted the best Samsung phone against the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, which is widely considered the best camera phone available right now. But while the Oppo flagship was the favorite going into my photo walk, the Samsung surprised me in a few ways.
With the S26 Ultra, the Korean giant doubled down on software and bundled it with larger apertures on two sensors, whereas Oppo went all-in on hardware upgrades and paired them with meaningful software advancements. It also added 10x optical zoom, making the Find X9 Ultra the only Ultra phone with this feature in 2026. Oppo says its 10x telephoto camera is 3x more light-sensitive than the Galaxy S23 Ultra's 10x camera.
