There is a version of buying a flagship phone where you pay full price at launch, watch the price drop four months later, and spend the rest of the year quietly annoyed about it.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has dropped to £999, down from its £1,279 launch price, which means £280 off one of the most complete Android phones available without waiting for a successor to make the maths work.
Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra has just slipped to its best price to date, carving £280 off a flagship that’s only launched a few months ago
The Galaxy S26 Ultra has slipped to its lowest price to date, taking £280 off a handset that’s still only a few months old
That 200MP wide camera is where the Galaxy S26 Ultra earns the most attention, shooting with wider apertures for 47% improved brightness compared to its predecessor, and pairing that sensor with a Nightography mode that keeps footage clear and detailed in conditions where most phones simply give up.
The same system extends to a 100x AI-powered Space Zoom that locks on and stabilises distant subjects in a way that feels less like a party trick and more like something you actually reach for, because the ProVisual Engine processes the image data in real time to keep detail intact at distances that would dissolve on any other lens.
Powering all of this is a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor with a redesigned Vapor Chamber for thermal management, meaning the Galaxy S26 Ultra handles sustained gaming, 8K video recording, and Galaxy AI tasks simultaneously without throttling in the way flagship phones sometimes do when everything is pushed at once.
That Galaxy AI layer runs through the whole experience, letting you describe a photo edit in plain language through Photo Assist and have it executed without opening a single tool, or use the built-in Privacy Display to hide your screen from anyone beside you without switching apps or adjusting settings.
The 6.9-inch AMOLED panel refreshes at 120Hz with mDNIe colour processing and ProScaler AI upscaling, so everything from gaming to streaming looks sharper than the source material technically deserves, and the Armor Aluminium frame with Corning Gorilla Glass and IP68 protection means the phone handles the kind of daily wear that would concern you on a device at this price.
Anyone who has been watching the Galaxy S26 Ultra since launch and waiting for the number to move will find £999 a considerably easier argument than where it started, and the combination of camera capability, AI integration, and build quality makes that saving feel well-timed rather than accidental.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra is a classic Samsung “safe” upgrade; not that exciting, but undeniably still polished. It’s thinner, lighter, and the 6.9-inch screen continues to be the star of the show, this time boosted by unique privacy mode tech. However, the cameras – while still great in day-to-day use – are starting to lag behind the competition, and battery life could be better. It’s still a fantastic all-rounder, but not the automatic go-to option at the top-end of the market that it once was.
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Privacy screen tech is genuinely impressive
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Lighter and thinner than before
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Great performance
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New Galaxy AI smarts
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Very familiar camera hardware
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Battery life isn’t the best around
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No magnetic Qi2 charging
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