Galaxy S26 Ultra vs a Real Camera: Where the Phone Wins and Loses

Can a phone replace a proper camera? That’s the question people ask every time a new Galaxy Ultra phone comes out, and it’s one that YouTube photographers like Lee Zavitz (who pits the S26 Ultra’s Portrait mode against a Sony A1 II) and working photographers like Tyler Stalman and Evan Ranft (who’ve reviewed the Galaxy S26 Ultra) attempt to answer every year. The short answer: it depends on what you shoot.

On this page, we’re comparing the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s official specs to those of a full-frame camera, and looking into some of the most common claims one area at a time. We’re not testing it ourselves.

The spec sheets side by side

Lee Zavitz tests an A1 II, but all full-frame cameras (even cheaper bodies) are covered by the physics below because the sensor size is the same. APS-C sensors have an area of ~370mm², nearly five times the area of the phone’s main camera.

Megapixels don't make up for sensor size

The S26 Ultra’s main camera uses a comparatively tiny 1/1.3-inch ISOCELL HP2 sensor, crammed with 200 million teeny-tiny 0.6-micron pixels. (For 12.5MP images, Samsung claims you can bin 16 pixels together to form a single 2.4-micron pixel, which is why 12MP is the default photo size in Camera.) The A1 II, meanwhile, has 50 million comparatively gargantuan 4.2-micron pixels, and the sensor itself is around 11 times as large.

Area sets how much light the sensor collects at the same exposure, and shot noise reduction scales with the square root of sensor area, according to Wikipedia’s article on the subject, meaning that full frame enjoys a roughly threefold advantage over the S26 Ultra’s main camera. The two telephotos use even tinier sensors, 1/2.52-inch for the 5x telephoto and 1/3.94-inch for the 3x, and GSMArena’s review judged the 3x to be the weakest link when it came to low-light video. Our 12MP vs 50MP vs 200MP guide explains when the bigger Galaxy modes help.

Background blur comes from optics first

Crop factor (see Wikipedia’s table of camera sensors) also affects bokeh. This is because DoF is determined by the physical size of the aperture, and shorter lenses (required for small sensors) have smaller apertures. For example, the S26 Ultra’s f/1.4 main camera gives about the same background blur as a 23mm f/4.8 lens on full frame. Its f/2.9 5x camera (with a crop factor of almost 6) gives similar bokeh to a 111mm f/17-ish lens. Both are inferior to the background separation an 85mm f/1.8 lens can provide on full frame, especially for separating a face from the background.

Computational photography (a.k.a. Portrait mode) can narrow some of this gap, and DXOMARK awarded the S26 Ultra’s bokeh implementation a score of 165. However, depth estimation isn’t perfect and can struggle with hair and other fine detail. Real bokeh is still superior here. One improvement noted by GSMArena is that bokeh balls (points of light outside the focal plane) are now rendered as circles with the 5x camera. Our background blur guide shows how to get the most from the phone's own optics first.

High ISO and low light

Cameras have a leg up here because a camera’s big sensor can crank up the ISO, and the A1 II can natively shoot at up to ISO 32,000, to make up for the lack of light that way. Night mode is great for reducing noise, as Samsung says it takes 30 photos and combines them into one, but obviously it won’t work as well if there’s any movement.

Noise in portraits taken indoors or in low light (with people as the subject) is one of the S26 Ultra’s weaknesses according to DXOMARK, and GSMArena felt that details could be a bit soft in darker areas with the main camera in particular. But stacking frames isn’t quite as effective when the subject is moving, like when you’re trying to take shots of people at a party with artificial light. With a decently fast lens on your camera you can keep the shutter speed fast enough to freeze motion, but your phone is taking multiple shots of people that are, well, not staying still. Our night mode guide covers what the Galaxy does well after dark.

Autofocus and fast action

According to Wikipedia’s A1 II page, it shoots at 30fps with AF and AE calculated 120 times a second. Its improved Eye AF works on humans and animals (with an even bigger improvement for birds). This helps keep moving objects like running kids and flying birds in focus throughout a burst.

On the S26 Ultra, all pixels on the primary camera provide phase-detection autofocus information. According to Samsung, its Super QPD AF system can even autofocus in extremely low lighting conditions (1 lux). Swipe the shutter button to shoot bursts (Samsung hasn’t shared burst shooting speeds). There’s also a Photo enhancer option in One UI 9 with a Prioritize speed setting that captures photos faster with less image processing (spotted on a Galaxy S25 Ultra in November 2026). Our burst mode guide and sports guide cover the settings that help most.

Zoom and close-ups

There are four fixed focal lengths on the Galaxy, and you get cropped images at focal lengths in between or higher. Macro photography is taking pictures of objects at a short distance. The minimum focusing distance of the Galaxy’s 5x telephoto lens is rather long: GSMArena measured it to be 52cm, and Samsung tells you to keep objects at least 80cm away.

Some cameras use macro lenses for that purpose. DXOMARK found that the S26 Ultra can still capture macro shots with a high level of detail. Wildlife and sports photographers tend to shoot with cameras with large sensors and use long telephoto lenses to capture their subjects. The S26 Ultra’s long zoom isn’t bad either, as GSMArena rated its 10x images as okay but with quite a bit of sharpening. Our S26 Ultra zoom guide will tell you what distance each of those lenses is matched to, but 3x and 5x should cover most of what you need for cities and travel.

Video

The S26 Ultra can shoot 8K30 and 4K120 video. GSMArena found that the phone’s standard stabilisation was excellent across all cameras. GSMArena also liked how stable 5x footage was, almost tripod-level, when shooting standing up. Samsung Log shooting and five preset LUTs are available for post-processing. Tyler Stalman, who runs a studio that specialises in using phones to shoot videos for social media for his clients, was impressed by how much highlight and shadow detail Samsung Log managed to capture in an Artlist-sponsored review.

Footage in low light was very soft, and the shadows were noisy according to GSMArena, particularly when using the 3x camera. APV, Samsung’s home-grown video codec, produces big files, around 1.5GB for just a minute of 1080p30 video in GSMArena’s tests. Interchangeable lenses, in-body stabilisation for video and stills and shallow depth of field are among the ways cameras still trump phones for video. Some, like the A1 II, can even shoot 8K30 video with 10-bit 4:2:2 recording, according to Wikipedia. Our Samsung Log guide covers exposing and grading Galaxy footage.

Where the phone is ahead

At 214g, the S26 Ultra is more likely to actually be with you when a photo opportunity arises than the A1 II, which weighs in at 743g without a lens. And there’s image processing that your camera can’t do (or that would require additional accessories). For example, turning on Auto HDR in the Camera Assistant will merge multiple exposures together, and Night mode will combine images together for better low-light shots (even when shooting handheld).

There are also options in Expert RAW’s Labs menu, like Astrophoto (which merges multiple images together for better night sky shots), Virtual Aperture (according to SamMobile, you can simulate apertures from f/1.4 to f/16) and, as GSMArena pointed out, an ND filter option (from ND2 to ND1000) for shooting with longer shutter speeds during the day. Our Expert RAW guide explains the app.

Opinions differ on the RAW files themselves. In a Squarespace-sponsored review of the S26 Ultra, photographer Evan Ranft explained that while RAW photos from Samsung phones aren’t his favourite to edit, he preferred working with files from the S26 Ultra to those captured on the S25 Ultra. And according to pro photographer Tyler Stalman, if you shoot RAW on the S26 Ultra and remove Samsung’s tone mapping, you get images that look similar to those captured on a camera with a larger sensor.

When the phone is enough

At 12MP (4000 by 3000 pixels) you'll be able to print at A4 size with more than 300 pixels per inch; 50MP (in good light conditions) provides extra pixels for larger prints. The following table shows which use cases the phone camera copes with well:

If you've been considering the purchase of a camera, you could also keep a list of the shots your phone missed for a month or so and see what types of situations your phone camera isn't up to. If it's mostly action shots or low-light situations, then you may well need that camera (and that list may also tell you what type of lens to start with!).

Frequently asked questions