I'm a big fan of the new Privacy Display feature on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, thanks to all the protection it offers for your sensitive info, but it's become clear that there are some trade-offs involved. Based on our testing the Galaxy S26 Ultra's brightness is lower than the S25 Ultra, even with Privacy Display switched off, and now our testing confirms it can also impact battery life.
There isn't a lot of difference in the overall endurance,; we're talking less than 20 minutes in the most extreme cases. But that doesn't change the fact that switching on Privacy Display may drain your battery faster than if it were switched off. Which is rather odd, because we were expecting the exact opposite to be true.
