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Is Samsung readying a giant camera island for the S26 Ultra?
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Samsung S26 Ultra: new leak hints at questionable design choices
Ben Andrews
17 September 2025
Along with potentially stagnant camera hardware
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(Image credit: Ice Universe / X)
A leak from prolific (and often reliable) tipster Ice Universe has given us some clues about what the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S26 series phones could look like. The leak shows a photo of protective film panels seemingly cut to fit over the camera islands on the S26 Pro, S26 Ultra and S26 Edge.
(Image credit: Ice Universe / X)
If the leak is legitimate, then the S26 Edge would have the most obviously different camera island design when compared to the current S25 Edge. Where the existing model has a small (if thick) camera bump, the S26 Edge looks to have a far wider camera island, much like the full-width protrusion sported by the iPhone 17 Pro.
(Image credit: Apple)
Quite why Samsung would want to emulate Apple for the S26 Edge is hard to fathom. The whole point of the Edge is to minimize phone thickness, so giving the S26 Edge a significantly larger camera bump than its predecessor seems counterintuitive.
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(Image credit: Samsung)
By contrast, the camera islands for the S26 Ultra and S26 Pro (the Pro is allegedly what the vanilla S26 will be known as) look to be far more conservative. Both follow Samsung’s typical triple lens in a vertical stack design language, albeit with a slight change from the S25 phones. Where those featured three distinct camera lenses, each protruding out of the phone’s rear panel, with no surrounding camera island, Samsung does appear to now be grouping all three lenses into one raised camera bump.
S26 Ultra mock-up on the left, S25 Ultra on the right (Image credit: Ice Universe / X)
From a technical standpoint, this does make sense. Samsung is on a mission to make its phones thinner, and not just the Edge model. There are reports that the S26 Ultra could be 0.4mm thinner than its predecessor, while other rumors suggest it could also have a larger aperture lens for its primary, wide-angle camera. If both rumors are true, then a camera island becomes essential. Why? Because if Samsung was to retain the same separate lens design we’ve seen in its last few flagship generations, the main camera lens on the S26 Ultra would stick out of the phone way too far. The use of a camera island serves to soften the thickness transition between the main body of the phone and the end of the camera lens.
A camera island/bump helps disguise the thickness difference between the camera lenses and the rest of the phone body (Image credit: Basil Kronfli)
However, in giving the S26 Ultra a camera island, Samsung would potentially be sacrificing what was a relatively clean design language to make the S26 Ultra look like any other flagship phone with a big camera bump. The leaked S26 Ultra image also shows the phone’s frame corners are more rounded than those on the S25 Ultra, which in turn deviated from the completely square corners of the S24 Ultra.
The S24 Ultra was unashamedly boxy. Is Samsung set to round off the S26 Ultra’s corners? (Image credit: Luke Baker / Digital Camera World)
The new rounded look appears to ape the iPhone, which is sure to come as a disappointment to many Samsung fans who’d prefer the brand to retain a more distinctive look.
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If the rumors and leaks turn out to be correct and the S26 Ultra has to rely on little more than a larger aperture lens to differentiate itself from the S25 Ultra when it comes to camera hardware, and that in turn compromises the phone’s styling, the likely January launch could be a disappointment.
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Ben Andrews
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Ben is the Imaging Labs manager, responsible for all the testing on Digital Camera World and across the entire photography portfolio at Future. Whether he’s in the lab testing the sharpness of new lenses, the resolution of the latest image sensors, the zoom range of monster bridge cameras or even the latest camera phones, Ben is our go-to guy for technical insight. He’s also the team’s man-at-arms when it comes to camera bags, filters, memory cards, and all manner of camera accessories – his lab is a bit like the Batcave of photography! With years of experience trialling and testing kit, he’s a human encyclopedia of benchmarks when it comes to recommending the best buys.
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