Samsung has a good phone on its hands with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but the new flagship has been plagued with claims that the display is harmful at worst, and degraded at best. All signs point to the new Privacy Display being the main culprit of any issues.
Our own lab tests prove that the phone is slightly dimmer than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, even with Privacy Display turned off. Other publications, like GSMArena, found that under a microscope, the structure of the S26 panel is different, and drastically so with Privacy Display on.
Recently, Samsung provided an official statement to our colleagues at Tech Radar confirming that there is an impact:
"Privacy Display is designed to protect users' privacy by providing a vivid visual experience for using the phone in normal use cases. Some variation will be seen when the phone is held at certain angles and when set to maximum brightness; however, any impact on actual usage when holding the phone should be negligible."
From our experience, with Privacy Display on, there are variations in screen quality depending on your viewing angle, but that's the whole point of the feature. Moreover, when looking at the screen straight-on, any signs of visual degradation resulting from the Privacy Display are indeed "negligible."
However, some users also suspect the new display is messing with the device's PWM dimming functionality, causing unexpected eye strain and headaches.
Anecdotally, I upgraded to an S26 Ultra after my S22 decided to stop charging, and I've found the display unproblematic and haven't noticed any particular problems with brightness issues.
If you're a yearly upgrader, the S25 Ultra to S26 Ultra pipeline is probably annoyingly dimmer, but if you're coming from an older Galaxy device like I am, I imagine it won't be as impactful.
Still, this is the first go-round for Samsung and Privacy Display, so hopefully the company is able to make improvements for next year's edition. In our review, Tom's Guide global editor Mark Spoonauer called the Privacy Display "truly helpful and innovative."
