A recent leak suggests that Samsung plans to make next year’s Galaxy S26 Edge thinner and yet pack in a bigger battery. The same source also mentioned that the Galaxy S26 Ultra is “100%” confirmed to support charging speeds faster than 45W. If you were hoping the faster charging speeds would come with a bump in battery capacity, that might not be the case.
In a series of posts on Weibo, Ice Universe — the original source for previous leaks — shared more details about the Galaxy S26 Ultra. According to him, Samsung reportedly aims to make the phone less than 8mm thin.
For comparison, the Galaxy S25 Ultra has an 8.2mm waistline — down considerably from the 8.6mm-thick Galaxy S24 Ultra. Sadly, this thinness will come at the expense of battery capacity, with Samsung seemingly sticking to the same 5,000mAh cell as its Ultra flagships from the last few years.
It’s unclear why Samsung will not use the same “new” battery technology that it supposedly plans to use on the Galaxy S26 Edge to fit the S26 Ultra with a beefier battery. Despite being an Ultra flagship, the Galaxy S25 Ultra packs the smallest battery among its rivals. The OnePlus 13, for comparison, packs a considerably larger 6,000mAh cell — all thanks to the use of silicon-carbon tech.
Faster charging speeds should make up for the modest battery capacity
On the bright side, the leaker believes the company will boost the charging speed to 60W, which should reduce the 0-100% charging time notably. However, based on how Samsung’s fast charging implementation currently works, the S26 Ultra will likely hit the full 60W rate only when the battery is nearly depleted.
The leaker also mentions that Samsung will use the Qualcomm-supplied Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 ‘for Galaxy’ on its Galaxy S26 lineup. It will purportedly hit a peak frequency of 4.74GHz — significantly higher than the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s clock speed of 4.47GHz. It should use TSMC’s newer fabrication node, which should allow it to run cooler and consume less power — at least at lower clock speeds.
Despite several drawbacks, the Galaxy S25 Ultra has turned out to be Samsung’s highest-selling Ultra flagship in the last few years. This could be due to the phone’s sleeker design and deep AI integration. And it seems Samsung will double-down on this strategy for next year, instead of fighting a specs war with its rivals.
