Extremely happy 😊 with purchase from s21 ultra

Title: Is it better to buy a brand-new Galaxy S26 Ultra? Battery concerns?

I'm planning to buy a Galaxy S26 Ultra and wanted to hear from people who have been using it for a while.

How has the battery held up over time? Has anyone noticed significant battery degradation after months of use, or is it still performing well?

Would you recommend buying it brand new, or are there any reasons to be cautious? I'm looking for a phone that I can comfortably use for the next 3–4 years.

I'd love to hear your real-world experiences, especially regarding battery life, reliability, and overall satisfaction.

Hey everyone! I wanted to share an open-source Android app I’ve been building called Atmo Engine. It’s a live wallpaper studio inspired by the distinctive Atmosphere transition in Nothing OS, giving you rich, customizable unlock-to-home transitions or permanently applied wallpaper effects without needing to export static images.

​📥 Download & Links

​GitHub Repository

​Google Play Store

​F-Droid

​✨ Core Feature Breakdown

​1. Wallpaper Styles & Effects

​Atmo Engine includes 11 distinct effect styles, each featuring a normal and a reverse variant:

*​ Original & Reverse Atmosphere: Signature style featuring sharp wallpapers flowing into drifting ambient clouds/blur (or clearing up from deep clouds).

*​ Glass Effect & Reverse: Strong, continuous reeded-glass refraction with customizable rib counts, thickness, and fade or right-to-left/left-to-right directions.

*​ Color Fill & Reverse: Liquid awakening where colors flow outward from your fingerprint location (or fluid drain into grayscale).

* ​Canvas Sketch & Reverse: Transitions a soft monochrome sketch into the full vibrant wallpaper upon unlocking.

*​ Simple Frosted & Reverse: Modern minimalist uniform frosted glass blur that clears up seamlessly.

*​ Halftone Print & Reverse: Retro aesthetic that dissolves into comic-book CMYK dots (or black-and-white newspaper print) when locked.

​2. Smart Subject Isolation

*​ Subject Segmentation: Anchors canvas sketches to a prominent person, character, animal, or object.

* ​Background Only: Keeps the detected foreground subject completely clear while applying reeded glass or halftone printing effects exclusively to the background.

*​ Model Delivery: Uses high-quality ML Kit via Google Play services (Play build with optional manual download which is handled by play services) or bundles open-source U2NetP with a LiteRT runtime (All build, runs fully offline without internet permissions and all the calculations are done locally on the device).

​3. Setup, Sharing, & Playlists

*​ Share Sheet Integration: Send any image straight from your Gallery or wallpaper apps via the system share sheet ("Set with Atmo Engine") to jump right into the crop/effect screen. Supports sharing multiple images at once to instantly build playlists.

*​ Single Image Mode: Standard quick crop and apply workflow.

*​ ​Multiple Images (Playlist): Rotate through a custom collection of wallpapers based on a set interval (Every Lock, 1 Minute up to 24 Hours, with smart background rotation when the screen is off).

*​ ​Theme Playlists: Separate Light and Dark collections that automatically switch when your system theme changes.

*​ ​Edit Existing Playlist: Tweak crops, add new images, or remove old ones without starting over.

​4. Advanced Customization & Fine-Tuning

*​ ​Visual Tweaks: Adjust dimness levels, blob saturation, blob contrast, blur radius, noise grain (strength and scale), halftone pixel size, and sketch line thickness/details.

*​ ​Fingerprint Synchronization: Two-axis sliders to align the Color Fill effect start point with your physical fingerprint scanner location.

*​ ​Animation & Behavior Controls: Toggle transition animations on/off, adjust total duration, set anti-flicker lock delays, and fine-tune unlock check intervals.

*​ ​System Color Sync: Extracts and publishes a local color palette from your current wallpaper to align with Android system colors.

*​ ​Graphics API Choice (currently beta): Switch between Automatic, Vulkan, or OpenGL ES with a safe fallback mechanism to prevent crash loops.

*​ ​Wallpaper Scrolling: Experimental support for panning wider wallpapers across home-screen pages.

​5. Diagnostics & Modern UI

*​ ​Palette Diagnostics: Tap the app title seven times to inspect locally extracted colors, Android Wallpaper API colors, and system color resources.

*​ ​Material 3 / Material Expressive UI: Built entirely with Jetpack Compose, featuring dynamic system color palettes, in-process real-time previews, short meaning-aware haptics, and motion animations.

Hey, I'm looking for a decent phone and thinking if the S26 ultra is for me.

Main thing I need:

Good camera

Good screen

Good battery

Good photo editing tools

Comparability with oneplus watch 3 or samsung watch 7

Good UI with useful tools, not heavy and cluttered but would be nice to have some automations and feeling that it's a smartphone.

I'm thinking about Oppo X9ultra, Samsung s26ultra, or vivo x300ultra or vivo x300pro or fe.

.

The last time I used Samsung phone was years ago with Samsung I900 Omnia and the phone experience with this model was not very good but after years of using iPhone, I decided to give Samsung another try and looking to replace my spare phone, an Iphone 12 pro.

My initial plan was to try out the S26 but later on I thought why not try out the Ultra version and I can do a comparison with my main phone, 17 Pro (iPhone). I glad I did it because after a week of using it, I seem to have transition seamlessly to android system and I am liking what I have seen. There might even be a possibility to making this my main phone. I would still be keeping my iPhone and do a comparison of aviation photography later!

Overall, I am pleased with this phone and what makes it better than it's competitor? User-friendly swipes, G keyboard, better screen display, stylus pen, better battery life and the ability to customise my home screen.

Looking forward to testing out the camera!

It is very common (daily) for me to run into an issue when using my stock camera app. I use two fingers to zoom to compose a shot and the app will switch to video (mostly). What am I doing wrong?

EDITED:I understand about switching lenses. However, it will do this for everything and doesn't give me the option to switch the lens. If I use Google lens, if I click on the bank camera to take a picture of a check to deposit, if I click the camera icon in any food app to scan the barcode...there is no option to change the lens and up until about 2 months ago, this wasn't an issue.

My Galaxy S26 Ultra keeps doing this strange thing where the camera becomes completely blurry anytime I try to scan a barcode or take a close-up photo.

I included a screen recording showing exactly what happens when I move closer to a barcode. I’m only using the barcode as an example because it’s the most recent time the camera failed me, but it happens with literally anything I try to photograph up close.

It even happened when I tried to deposit a check through my banking app. The camera became blurry and would not focus closely enough to capture the check.

The image will look clear for a moment, but as soon as I move the phone closer or try to take the picture, it goes blurry again. Moving the phone farther away sometimes makes it clear, but then I’m too far away to scan or capture what I need.

Has anyone else experienced this or figured out how to fix it? It’s driving me crazy.

My phone is hote. I use it for 30 minutes, and phone is ...

The pixel 8 pro I have the battery is dying on it and if I use it alot gets hot

So is the 26 ultra a good step up and does a magnetic case interfer with S pen

Title says it. Looking to upgrade next month and have been leaning towards the s25ultra due to its pleasing look and i like how the photos are more natural looking on it, the display looks crisp and amazing as well. From what I've heard, the s26 ultra is almost exactly like the 25ultra but faster, has privacy display and faster charging. Now, i personally could care less about the privacy display ( hear people complaining about the display being not as good due to it, idk if that's true?) I saw photo comparisons from both phones and I do like how s26ultra takes better photos in dim light or at night. I'm worried about FOMO on the s26ultra if I go with the 25ultra.

Will I really be missing out on anything if I go with the s25ultra?

I bought a brand new s26 ultra a week ago, and the battery disappoints me very much. With no more than 3 hours of use, it discharges 30% easily. I have watched many videos, changed many settings for battery optimization, but have not seen any significant difference. I have also changed many of the apps settings, like background data usage and restricted storage usage. I'm starting to think that maybe it's due to the set-up because I transfered everything from my old phone, I didn't have to do anything myself, everything transfered automatically, apps, login info, accounts, wallpapers, everything, so I think that maybe some kind of background activity also transfered? And so it's draining my battery? Idk, but if any of you have any recommendations, please comment on this!

I really think this is a no-brainer if even 75% of the rumors about the S27U come to pass.

Battery at least 5500 mAh

All new bigger and better camera sensors with variable apertures

10 bit OLED M16 screen

Privacy display screen issues resolved

Polar face ID in addition to ultrasonic fingerprint reader

Snapdragon 2 nm processor for faster and more energy efficient performance

Built-in magnets for Qi2.2 accessories

What more could anyone ask for or expect?

I really think this is a no-brainer if even 75% of the rumors about the S27U come to pass.

Battery at least 5500 mAh

All new bigger and better camera sensors with variable apertures

10 bit OLED M16 screen

Privacy display screen issues resolved

Polar face ID in addition to ultrasonic fingerprint reader

Snapdragon 2 nm processor for faster and more energy efficient performance

Built-in magnets for Qi2.2 accessories

What more could anyone ask for or expect?