There's only a few days until the Galaxy S25's launch day. But a rumor for the Galaxy S26 could make people interested in this year's flagship potentially reconsider.
Jukanlosreve on X, referring to leaker Ice Universe, claims that the Galaxy S class of '26 will contain silicon-carbon batteries. These cells, already found in phones like the OnePlus 13 and Honor Magic7 Pro, have a higher density than standard lithium-ion batteries, meaning more charge without increasing the physical size of the battery.
The post offers no details on exactly how large the new batteries would be. But when Honor introduced its silicon-carbon batteries almost two years ago, it claimed there is roughly a 13% increase in switching to silicon-carbon. You can see what this would mean if this increase was applied to the batteries of the Galaxy S24 series' models, as a rough impression of what this could mean for the Galaxy S26 series.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Galaxy S24 | Galaxy S26 (estimated) |
| Standard model battery capacity (mAh) | 4,000 | 4,520 |
| Plus | 4,900 | 5,537 |
| Ultra | 5,000 | 5,650 |
Jukanlosreve on X, referring to leaker Ice Universe, claims that the Galaxy S class of '26 will contain silicon-carbon batteries. These cells, already found in phones like the OnePlus 13 and Honor Magic7 Pro, have a higher density than standard lithium-ion batteries, meaning more charge without increasing the physical size of the battery.
The post offers no detail on exactly how large the new batteries would be. But when Honor introduced its silicon-carbon batteries almost two years ago, it claimed there is roughly a 13% increase in switching to silicon-carbon. You can see what this would mean if this increase was applied to the batteries of the Galaxy S24 series' models, as a rough impression of what this could mean for the Galaxy S26 series.
Samsung's adjusted the battery size of the Galaxy S and Galaxy S Plus models over the years as the phones' sizes changed, but the Galaxy S25 is expected to use the same battery size as the Galaxy S24 series, which means the Galaxy S25 Ultra would have a 5,000 mAh capacity again, the same as all its predecessors dating back to the Galaxy S20 Ultra.
Galaxy phones perform well on our battery tests, but at the time of writing the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy S24 Plus sit at 9th and 11th on our best phone battery life rankings. There's plenty of room for Samsung to grow here, and boosting the size of its batteries is a good way to go about it.
Snapping back to the present, the Galaxy S25 series will be shown off on January 22nd at Galaxy Unpacked, and while the battery probably won't change, upgrades like new Galaxy AI features and a new ultrawide camera for the Galaxy S25 Ultra should still improve the phones' capabilities.
And while it's going to be another year until we see the Galaxy S26 series appear, it's good to know that Samsung could be embracing new battery tech that could help users.
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