This new Camera Island on Galaxy S26 Ultra just saved us from the bare-minimum boring S25 Ultra

Samsung just launched their ultra-flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S26 Ultra. The big launch was last month but the S26 lineup will be available for purchase from this month, March 11. I have become a fan of Samsung phones over the years, and this is mostly because of their improved reliable software experience. Samsung's own One UI Android-skin has pretty meaningful original interface designs. It just gotten more and more refined over the last couple of years. I love Samsung for bringing cutting-edge devices like the Foldable smartphones where there are a lot of innovations going on. But their regular smartphones have been looking pretty boring lately. The most boring smartphone was their last year's Galaxy S25 Ultra. It had an ultra-simple design for the camera array, which looked very boring to me. From a designer's point of view, I want to talk about the Galaxy S26 Ultra's new camera-island design compare to the S25 Ultra's camera design, also their camera specs.

For smartphone cameras, every camera lens has its own circular ring around it for protection, durability and optical benefits. That camera ring is bare-minimum an integral part of the camera hardware. Its job is to house the outer glass lens, it's more like a protective glass than lens. However, you can have a design where each camera lens has its own ring around it vs a big ring housing a big outer lens that covers multiple actual camera lens. So, both the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and S25 Ultra have separate camera rings around for each lens. The main difference is that the new Galaxy S26 Ultra has a base housing to support the individual cameras. You can call the base "a camera plateau" or "a camera island" or something funny that your friend will understand.

Think of a skyscraper where the top and bottom have a same footprint like same width. As it is very tall the same width makes it look pretty weak and weird. It feels like there isn't enough base to support the structure, kinda lonely. Similarly, the camera rings on the S25 Ultra stick out from the back glass by quite a bit. So the protrusion without a supporting camera plateau makes the camera rings look weak and weird. The new Galaxy S26 Ultra with the camera island looks simple, classy and minimal vs the super ultra minimal just the camera rings without a camera plateau kinda design on the last year's Galaxy S25 Ultra.

As a designer with an engineering background, I think that a design can be simple and minimal but a very simple or a very minimal design may not feel like a design. If the effort and thinking behind creating the design is very little, it kinda doesn't feel like a design at all. Same think happening with the S25 Ultra that just has its bare-minimum components. The Galaxy S25 Ultra's camera design is too simple and minimal to call it a design. I think the new Galaxy S26 Ultra with this new camera island design just saved us from the boring looking previous S25 Ultra.

Galaxy S26 Ultra's camera island looks very clean, simple and refined. But if you look closely, there are many elements in play, like an architectural approach. The base of the camera plateau looks like a single piece glass, but it actually has 2 layers stacked on top of one another. The bottom-half layer looks like made of metal probably aluminum, and the top-half layer definitely looks like a translucent glass piece. This 2-material, stacked and refined design looks very simple in a good way, also very elegant to look at, which makes you perceive its depth. So, that's just the base of the S26 Ultra's translucent camera island, the individual camera rings also look very smooth, clean, polished and refined.

Last year's Galaxy S25 ultra looks like it has tall camera rings. But this year's Galaxy S26 ultra with the supporting camera plateau makes the depth of those camera rings smaller. This new design can add weight but the perceived camera protrusion got reduced. When I look at the Google Pixel 10 and the iPhone 17 Pro, their camera designs don't look very elegant or attractive. This is because of the use of metal at the top layer and the color. If it's metal then you kinda need a very subtle color to look good. The iPhone 17 Pro's all-metal camera bump with that screaming orange color is eye-catching but doesn't look very good. This is design that just screams without character like "look at me look at me, I have no clothes on" - just an empty pop.

However, the previous iPhone 16 Pro's camera plateau design was phenomenal. It was one of best designed camera bumps that Apple was continuing for some years. That iPhone 16 Pro's camera plateau is CNC-milled and sculpted from a single, continuous sheet of glass, and it made me love the back of iPhone 11 Pro where this Sculpted unibody glass-back design started. And looking back, I think the Google Pixel 6 Pro had a better camera design than the newer models. By the way, I like the new Galaxy S26 Ultra's camera island design way better than the Pixel 10 and iPhone 17 Pro, but the iPhone 16 Pro had a better more pronounced and elegant camera-bump design.

Getting technical for a second, the S26 Ultra is packing some serious heat under the hood. The star of the show is that massive 200 MP main sensor, which now has a wider f/1.4 aperture and that’s a huge deal because it lets in way more light for those crisp night shots. For zooming, it’s using a clever dual-telephoto setup, a 10 MP lens for your standard 3x portraits and a high-res 50 MP periscope lens for that 5x optical reach. They’ve also bumped the ultrawide to 50 MP, which is great for keeping details sharp when you’re cramming a whole landscape into the frame. Plus, with 8K video and multi-directional autofocus, the hardware is basically designed to be as fast and precise as a professional rig.

As for the actual shooting experience, it’s clear that Samsung is leaning into "smarter" photography. The addition of Horizon Lock is a game-changer for video, you can move the phone around, but the footage stays perfectly level, which is perfect for action shots. They've also included Best Face, which is a lifesaver for group photos where someone always happens to blink. You still get that ultra-fast Laser AF to keep things from getting blurry, and the Super Steady video combined with 10-bit HDR means your clips are going to look vibrant and smooth, almost like they were shot on a gimbal. The main 200 MP and the other 2 telephoto lens have Optical Image Stabilization. And the single 12 MP selfie camera has f/2.2 aperture that can shoot 4K video at both 30 and 60 fps.

Check out those articles from above, you can click on those linked images to read the articles. A while ago I published a review of the Samsung Galaxy A14 5G smartphone, check that out if you are into budget phones. In case you are interested in portable speakers, I compared 3 Boombox type speakers from 3 different brands such as Soundcore, Tribit and JBL. So don't forget to also check out that detailed comparison article about the JBL Boombox 3 vs Tribit Stormbox Blast vs Soundcore Boom 2 Plus.

The design is a very important thing for a device. You can connect this with real life too. For an example, if you want someone as you boyfriend or girlfriend, no matter how good their personality may be if you are not attracted to them, it's not gonna work. There needs to have a base level attractiveness to enter through the door and then if the character is good the overall attraction can skyrocket. Similar but smaller in scale with these smartphone designs, if you don't like the design how you are gonna deal with it for a couple of years.

The previous Galaxy S25 Ultra didn't have a good enough design that I am attracted to. That makes me way less interested in the S25 Ultra to know how good the performance and user experience is. The bare-minimum boring super-simple camera design didn't feel like a design to me. But Samsung just saved people like us who care about design deeply with this new camera island design on the Galaxy S26 Ultra smartphone. This new design is simple in a good way that has some depth and character. Galaxy S26 Ultra's camera plateau is very refined and elegant looking. I like this camera design way better, which makes me dive deeper into other aspects of the phone.

Also, please check out the JBL Charge 6 vs Charge 5 story for highlights.
IF you're interested in mid-sized portable speakers, check my JBL Charge 6 vs Bose SoundLink Plus article. The JBL Charge 6 did better in the head-to-head comparison.