The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is, at the time of writing, the best camera phone you can buy.
It’s a position that Samsung has held for a few generations of S Ultra phone now, thanks to its quad-camera array and 200MP main snapper, but there’s always room for improvement, and a new rumor has us crossing our fingers for next year’s release.
According to @SiddhantGeek on X, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra could have no fewer than three big camera upgrades.
Galaxy S26 Ultra - Rumoured/LeakedWide 23.6mm F/1.4-4.0(variable), OIS, AF200MP 0.6um 1/1.3inch3.5x Telephoto 80mm F/2.4, OIS, AF50MP 0.56um 1/3.15inch8x Telephoto 184mm F/3.0, OIS, AF50MP 0.64um 1/2.76inchUltrawide 13mm F/1.9, AF50MP 0.7um 1/2.52inchCredits to :…March 25, 2025
The first adds more meat to the bones of one rumor that we’ve heard before: that Samsung is considering bringing back the variable aperture to the flagship phone.
The tipster claims the aperture will range from f/1.4 to f/4.0, which would be a huge improvement on the last time the company tried this: a binary choice between f/1.5 and f/2.4 on the Samsung Galaxy S10. Hopefully this is indicative of something more like the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, where the motorized aperture system can be adjusted in 0.01 stop increments.
Whichever way Samsung chooses to implement it, being able to change the aperture size directly impacts how much light the sensor takes in. That affects not only the brightness of an image, but the depth of field. It will give photographers a lot more flexibility, in other words.
The other two upgrades relate to the telephoto lenses. @SiddhantGeek writes that the 10MP 3x sensor is being replaced with a 50MP 3.5x model and that the second 50MP 5x telephoto lens is also being upgraded to one with an 184mm focal length with 8x zoom.
Too good to be true?
This all sounds very promising, but there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. For starters, @SiddhantGeek isn’t a source with a track record to study, and while the account credits @Jukanlosreve, we can’t see where.
Even @SiddhantGeek seems a touch skeptical, writing in another post on X: “Yeah. Even I don't believe it.”
While defending the rumor in other posts, @SiddhantGeek points to words from the established leaker Ice Universe on Meeco, where he does indeed seem to report on another leaker’s words about the dual-50MP telephoto zoom sensor. But the phrasing here is ambiguous.
“He said that Samsung will ship 50M 0.56μm and 50M 0.64μm sensors, so that the Samsung S26Ultra can cancel the 3x 10MP sensor and replace it with a dual periscope camera, and 200mm (8x) 50MP becomes possible,” Ice Universe writes of a report from another leaker, E8M_8888.
“If so, then we can expect the S26 Ultra 3.5x 50MP + 8x 50MP configuration, which would be great if it were true.” The emphasis is mine, but at best, this is Ice Universe hedging his bets, and, at worst, openly skeptical.
Finally, there’s Samsung’s track record. Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S Ultra series has often led the way in terms of camera tech over the last few years, but change has been incremental from generation to generation. To put it mildly, it would be extremely out of character for Samsung to drop three big camera upgrades in one generation.
As such, you should probably treat this rumor with a pinch of salt. We may well see an upgrade to a variable aperture or upgrades to one or other telephoto lens — but it’s unlikely we’ll see all three at once.
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