Ellie Kemp
For those of us who value our privacy, Samsung's latest phone launch could be a game-changer.
The South Korean company released its highly-anticipated Galaxy S26 Ultra model on Wednesday (February 25), and technology enthusiasts are already smitten with its built-in privacy screen.
Being able to snoop on what other people are doing on their phones has been the source of both entertainment and mortification over the last decade and a half, especially with the rise of social media.
While trying to figure out what TV show someone is streaming on the train might be a fun way to pass the time, nobody wants to end up the subject of a viral post for sending ultra-cringe messages to their partners or for Googling some seriously weird stuff. You know the kind of posts I'm thinking of...
If you're constantly looking over your shoulder while using your phone out and about, you may well have already gone out and bought a stick-on privacy screen.
They make it so the display can only be viewed from certain angles, preventing curious eyes from looking at your device.
But the stick-on ones can't easily be removed, making it awkward when wanting to share your screen with people in real life.
With Samsung's latest release, however, you can toggle the screen on and off in the quick settings menu.
So when you want to show your in-real-life friends yet another video of Punch the monkey, you can simply turn your screen around as usual. No faff involved, other than a simple switch.
Tech expert Mukul Sharma demonstrated how well the Galaxy S26 Ultra privacy screen works with a video on X, previously Twitter. See for yourself below!
As T3 explains, not only can you easily turn the setting on and off, but you can also set it to automatically come on for certain apps, such as banking, and even have it hide certain notifications.
It can also cover PIN entry, but doesn't affect password input fields.
For the security-conscious, this feature is incredibly attractive. It could deliver a blow to Apple if users feel so strongly that they opt for a Galaxy S26 Ultra instead of the company's first foldable phone, expected to drop later this year. Only seven years behind Samsung...
That is, of course, unless Apple matches Samsung, but this seems very unlikely, especially considering Samsung supplies the US tech giant with OLED screens.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra starts out at $1,299.99, or $54.17 a month, for its base model with 256GB of internal storage and 12GB of RAM.
That figure rises to $1,499.99, or $62.50 a month, for 512GB of storage and $1,799.99, or $75.01 a month, for 1TB.
The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra comes in six colorways; black, white, sky blue, cobalt violet, silver shadow and pinkgold. The latter two are available as online exclusives only.