First things to try on your new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

Getting a new phone is exciting, but it can also be a little overwhelming. The Galaxy S26 Ultra comes with a lot going on under the hood, and some of its best features are not immediately obvious when you first pick it up. Here are the first things worth exploring once you have it set up.

Here is a quick overview of what is worth trying first:

This is one of the most talked-about features on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, and for good reason — it is the world’s first built-in Privacy Display on mobile. When Privacy Display is on, the screen becomes much harder to read from the side, so people sitting next to you cannot easily see what is on your display.

The smarter way to use it is not to leave it on all the time, but to set it to activate automatically in situations where it actually matters. Go to Settings > Display > Privacy Display and tap on Conditions for turning on.

From there you can select specific apps — banking, messages, or anything else you want to keep private — as well as situations like entering a PIN or password. This way it protects what matters without getting in the way the rest of the time.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra’s main camera shoots in 12MP by default, but there is a new 24MP mode worth enabling. It captures more detail than 12MP — useful when you want to crop into a shot or capture finer textures — while keeping file sizes manageable and maintaining access to all zoom levels.

Higher resolution modes like 50MP and 200MP are there when you need them, but 24MP is the practical everyday sweet spot for most people.

To enable it, you will need to install the Camera Assistant app from the Galaxy Store. Once installed, go to camera settings > Camera Assistant > 24 MP resolution and enable the 24 MP in Photo mode option. It will then appear as an option in the camera app’s resolution switcher.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has the brightest camera system Samsung has ever put in a Galaxy phone, and low-light video is where that shows up most clearly. The wide camera’s new f/1.4 lens lets in 47% more light than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which means footage looks cleaner and more detailed without the phone having to work as hard to compensate.

Find a dimly lit scene — even something as simple as a room with a lamp on — and record a short clip. It is one of those things that is easier to appreciate when you see it in action than when you read about it.

Now Brief is one of the updated Galaxy AI features on the Galaxy S26 Ultra worth setting up early. It surfaces useful information from across your apps — upcoming appointments, reservation details from your messages, expiring coupons, and health data from the Samsung Health App — into one glanceable overview on your lock and home screens.

What makes it more useful on the Galaxy S26 Ultra is that it now pulls in information you may have missed, not just what is already in your calendar. If a hotel booking is in your email or a reminder slipped by, Now Brief brings it to your attention when it matters. It learns your habits over time, so the more you use it, the more relevant it becomes.

Photo Assist, part of the Galaxy AI suite, has been around for a while, but it has been completely overhauled on the Galaxy S26 Ultra with One UI 8.5. The most interesting new addition is the Create tab, which lets you edit photos using text and voice prompts.

Open any photo in the Gallery, tap the AI button, and select Create. From there, describe what you want to change — something like “make this a sunset” or “add my dog to the background” — and the phone will regenerate the image accordingly. It gives you a good sense of how much Samsung has expanded what Photo Assist can do compared to previous Galaxy phones.

Creative Studiois a new Galaxy AI tool in One UI 8.5 that generates images from scratch using text prompts. Where Photo Assist edits photos you have already taken, Creative Studio creates entirely new visuals — stickers, wallpapers, greeting cards, profile cards, and wallpapers — based on what you describe.

To try it, open Creative Studio from the app drawer, pick a template type, and type a description of what you want. You can also access it directly from Samsung Notes by pressing the Galaxy AI icon. It is worth experimenting with early to get a sense of what it can produce.

The S Pen on the Galaxy S26 Ultra is precise and responsive, with pressure sensitivity and hover detection that make it well suited for writing, sketching, and annotation. It works directly with Samsung Notes, where you can take handwritten notes, markup documents, and sketch ideas. Samsung Notes also works with Galaxy AI to summarise and reformat handwritten notes automatically.

The S Pen is one of the things that sets the Galaxy S26 Ultra apart from other flagship phones, and it is easy to underuse if you do not spend a few minutes exploring what it can do.

Audio Eraseris one of the most practical Galaxy AI features on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. While a video is playing in YouTube, Netflix, Instagram, or other supported apps, swipe down to open the Quick Panel and tap Audio Eraser. It will filter out background noise in real time — crowd noise, wind, ambient sound — while keeping voices clear.

It is worth trying on a sports video or a concert clip to get a feel for how well it works. Previously Audio Eraser only worked on videos you had recorded yourself, so the expansion to streaming and social apps makes it a much more useful everyday feature.

With everything the Galaxy S26 Ultra can do, it helps to have the phone manage your notifications more intelligently. Notification Highlights does two things: it learns which alerts you tend to check first and moves them to the top of your panel, and it condenses long or busy chat threads into shorter summaries so you can see what a conversation is about at a glance.

You can enable it from Settings > Galaxy AI > Notification Highlights. It takes a few days to learn your habits, but once it does, your notification panel becomes noticeably easier to manage.

^{[1] Privacy Display: Requires manual activation in settings to function. Privacy Display feature is not AI-powered.}

^{[2] Nightography: Results may vary depending on light condition, subject and/or shooting conditions.}

^{[2] Now Brief: Samsung account login and network connection required.}

^{[3] Photo Assist: Requires network connection and Samsung account login. A visible watermark is overlaid on the saved image to indicate it was generated by Galaxy AI. Accuracy of output not guaranteed.}

^{[4] Creative Studio: Requires network connection and Samsung account login. Accuracy of output not guaranteed.}

^{[5] Audio Eraser: Samsung account login required. Six types of sound can be detected; voices, music, wind, nature, crowd and noise. Results may vary depending on audio source & condition of the video. Network connection required to be used on supported apps.}