Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra still skips this basic display upgrade

The Galaxy S26 Ultra’s Privacy display feature helps Samsung’s flagship to stand out from its rivals. It leverages Samsung Display’s years of expertise in OLED tech to mask sensitive information on the screen to keep prying eyes away. Despite introducing such an innovative feature, the Galaxy S26 Ultra still misses out on a basic display upgrade.

All premium and flagship Android phones launched in the last few years use a 10-bit OLED panel. This allows the display to show up to 1.07 billion colors, reducing banding and providing better color accuracy. Samsung is the only outlier, sticking to an 8-bit panel on its flagship Galaxy phones, which can only display 16.7 million colors.

At the Galaxy S26 launch event and press briefings, Samsung stated that its newest flagship uses a 10-bit OLED panel. However, the company has since then reached out to SamMobile to clarify that this is not the case. Like previous Ultra models, the S26 Ultra uses an 8-bit OLED panel.

With an 8-bit OLED panel, you’re more likely to notice visible banding in scenes like a fading blue sky, cinematic HDR content, or low-light shots. A 10-bit panel delivers smoother gradients and more natural color transitions as it can display more colors.

Another year, another Galaxy flagship with an 8-bit panel

Samsung is supposedly using frame rate control (FRC) on the S26 Ultra’s 8-bit panel. In theory, it can simulate 1 billion colors, reducing banding. However, it’s nowhere near as good as a 10-bit panel, with the difference especially being visible when streaming HDR content from Netflix, YouTube, or other platforms.

Since the Galaxy S26 Ultra misses out on a 10-bit panel, it’s safe to assume that even the smaller S26+ and S26 use an 8-bit panel.

For a company that stands out for its display technology, it’s puzzling to see Samsung stick to using 8-bit displays on its flagship phones, especially when competitors transitioned to 10-bit displays years ago. On paper, the difference between an 8-bit and 10-bit panel may not seem like a big deal, but the latter has some notable real-life advantages.

At this point, only Samsung knows why it continues to stick with 8-bit panels on its flagship devices.