Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra vs Pixel 10 Pro XL: Main differences

Samsung has just unveiled the Galaxy S26 series, the company's first major release for 2026. Chief among the new devices is the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Samsung's most highly anticipated phone. 

While it is mostly similar to the Galaxy S25 Ultra in terms of design and features, it still scores enough key upgrades to be a major release for the Android world.

Google, another major player in the Android market, released its Pixel 10 lineup in the summer of 2025. Of these, the Pixel 10 Pro XL is clearly the best phone, despite the existence of the foldable Pixel 10 Pro Fold. 

At the moment, the Pixel 10 Pro XL serves as the natural rival to the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but can it survive the arrival of the Galaxy flagship, and will it be able to mount up an adequate opposition?

Pre-order the Galaxy S26 for up to $500 off

$399 ⁹⁹

$899 ⁹⁹

$500 off (56%)

The "vanilla" Galaxy S26 has finally been announced. With a next-gen Galaxy AI and a powerful chip, this phone checks all the boxes. Right now, you can pre-order the phone for up to $500 with trade-ins.

Pre-order at Samsung

Pre-order the Galaxy S26+ for up to $700 off

$399 ⁹⁹

$1099 ⁹⁹

$700 off (64%)

The Galaxy S26+ is here, bringing improved software and a more powerful processor. The device can now be available for up to $700 off at the official store with eligible device trade-ins.

Pre-order at Samsung

Pre-order the Galaxy S26 Ultra for up to $900 off

$399 ⁹⁹

$1299 ⁹⁹

$900 off (69%)

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has been announced, bringing a Privacy Screen feature, insanely fast processor, and multiple Galaxy AI enhancements. Right now, you can pre-order the flagship for up to $900 off with eligible trade-ins.

Pre-order at Samsung

Google Pixel 10 Pro XL

6.8-inch

Triple camera

5200 mAh

16GB

$990 at eBay

With the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Samsung is not redefining the design language at all. Instead, it once again reiterates the same design as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, with rounded corners at the bottom and no right angles, except for where the display meets the frame. 

The only major change is the switch from titanium to aluminum, which is the same move that Apple pulled with its latest Pro iPhones. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is also sporting Gorilla Glass Armor at the front, which should offer better scratch and drop resistance. 

The Pixel 10 Pro XL brings no surprises to the design language and looks like most previous Pixels before it, boasting a flat aluminum frame with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 up at the front and in the rear. It also features the iconic camera strip.

In terms of size, the Galaxy is taller and wider but thinner and much lighter than the Pixel 10 Pro XL, so it's up to you which one should be considered the more compact device.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra retains the S Pen stylus, thankfully. The phone is also IP68 water and dust resistant. The Pixel doesn't come with a stylus but is also IP68-rated.

The Google phone remains a classy offering available in Moonstone, Obsidian, Porcelain, and Jade colors. The Galaxy S26 Ultra comes in Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, Black, and White, as well as Silver Shadow and Pink Gold, exclusively available on Samsung.com. 

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has the same 6.9-inch display as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, a Dynamic AMOLED 2X one, with a smooth 1-120Hz refresh rate and HDR support. Sadly, we haven't got a peak brightness increase here, and the phone maxes out at 2,600 nits of peak brightness. Samsung tries to offset that by giving us an anti-reflective screen coating for a third year in a row. 

The hero feature of the Galaxy S26 Ultra is the new Privacy Display feature, which automatically controls viewing angles when you're viewing sensitive information. For example, you can set the feature to only protect certain elements of the screen and only in certain scenarios. 

The Galaxy S26 Ultra also comes with an anti-reflective coating that eliminates undesirable reflections, just like on the two previous generations.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL scores a slightly smaller 6.8-inch 1-120Hz OLED Super Actua display, but it is potentially slightly brighter, being officially rated at 3,300 nits. So while it may not provide the most screen real estate or offer stylus support, the phone will be the brighter one. That further boosts outdoor legibility.

Our display tests show that while the Pixel 10 Pro Xl beats the Galaxy S26 Ultra in terms of peak brightness, the Samsung phone is slightly more color-accurate and has a lower minimum brightness, which is 

Display Measurements:

As already mentioned, the Galaxy S26 Ultra comes with Gorilla Glass Armor at the front, whereas the Pixel relies on Gorilla Glass Victus 2. Both should be plenty good when it comes to scratch and drop resistance.

Both the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Pixel 10 Pro XL rely on ultrasonic fingerprint scanners, but you can enroll your face as a convenient unlock method as well. The difference here is that the Face Unlock on the Pixel 10 Pro XL can be used for authenticating payments. 

The 3 nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has made its way inside the Galaxy S26 Ultra all around the globe. No Exynos 2600 chipset here. This Qualcomm chipset is the fastest one you can put on an Android phone these days, so performance will certainly be more than enough. 

The Galaxy S26 Ultra comes with a new thermal interface material and a redesigned vapor chamber that's some 20% better at dissipating heat away from the chip. This enables the device to sustain its peak performance for longer before throttling.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL relies on the 3 nm Google Tensor G5 chipset, and it's not only the first 3 nm Tensor, it's also the first truly custom Google chipset that's manufactured by TSMC. Previous Tensors were manufactured by Samsung and utilized elements of its Exynos chips. The Tensor G5 is different, but sadly this doesn't mean it's much faster than its predecessors.

And to absolutely no surprise, the Tensor G5 fails to mount up any significant pressure to the tuned-up Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip. It's beaten in both the single- and multi-core Geekbench 6 tests, and quite easily at that. 

The same applies to the 3DMark Extreme stress test, where the Pixel is also beaten. To be honest, I didn't expect anything else, so it's pretty much par for the course when it comes to the Tensor chip and synthetic benchmarks.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra comes with 12 GB of RAM, which is a lowly figure for a high-end Android flagship in early 2026. The standard is closer to 16 GB RAM these days, and the Pixel 10 Pro XL is equipped with exactly that much. To get 16 GB of RAM on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, one has to get the 1 TB version, which is the most expensive one around. 

The base version of both phones starts at 256 GB of storage, but you can get either one with either 512 GB or 1 TB of available storage on board. 

One UI 8.5 is the software of choice on the Galaxy S26 series, and besides seven years of software support, this one comes with many key new features, including important visual changes.

First, the software scores a new floating app bar at the bottom, which should improve the readability. Next up, One UI 8.5 now offers even more customization options and lets you personalize the Quick Settings panel even more by reordering and removing existing controls.

If you set a picture of a person or a pet as your lock screen wallpaper, the layout will automatically move around so that neither the clock nor the widgets obscure key parts of the image. There are a few extra customization options for the lock screen clock, too.

Galaxy AI has been upgraded with continuous image generation, which lets you generate several images without stopping and pick from the ones you want afterward.

Call Screening is another new feature that will let Galaxy AI answer calls for you and see who's calling and for what reason. You will be provided with a transcript and only then decide if you want to answer the call.

Bixby can now understand you better when you talk to the assistant in your own words. This lets you use it to find specific settings or features without having to sift through numerous menus. It now has an easy way of accessing your conversation history with Bixby.

The Galaxy S26 now comes with an AI-powered screenshot analyzer, which will automatically sort your screenshots into one of eight categories. You can then find these screenshots by simply searching for said category.

The Weather app has scored a more detailed new widget that will showcase a graph of any upcoming precipitation that is expected. Your daily alarms can also show the current weather as a background when they ring, which is a neat quality-of-life upgrade.

Samsung has also enhanced the battery info menu, making it easier to check the remaining battery life left, the battery usage, as well as your charging status. There are also two power-saving modes now: Standard, which is more temperate, and Maximum, which disables all non-essential features to boost battery life.

Samsung retains the very same camera setup as on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, with a quad-camera utilizing dual telephoto cameras and a large 200 MP main camera. The short telephoto is a 10 MP 3X one, while the longer zoom is a 50 MP 5X periscope. The camera setup is completed by a 50 MP ultrawide. 

The camera now comes with better image-processing and brighter apertures; letting more light in the camera is always welcome! There are also improvements to video stabilization: the phone uses real-time gyro and accelerometer data to keep horizons level and deliver smooth videos. The Galaxy S26 Ultra is also the first Galaxy to support the APV (Advanced Professional Video) format.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL, on the other hand, also didn't score a major hardware improvement in comparison with the Pixel 9 Pro XL, but the software has scored multiple important improvements. For example, the 5X telephoto now allows up to 100X digital zoom, which sort of matches most high-end phones hailing from mainland China.

For yet another year in a row, Samsung will be using a 5,000 mAh battery on its Ultra flagship. That was great back in 2020, but that was more than half a decade ago, and  the onslaught of carbon-silicon batteries in recent years means that Samsung's new flagship is seriously lagging. Even Apple has surpassed Samsung with the 5,088 mAh battery inside the iPhone 17 Pro Max. 

The Pixel 10 Pro XL is one of those rivals that have already beaten the Galaxy S26 Ultra in terms of battery capacity. The phone comes with a 5,200 mAh battery, the largest on any Pixel so far. Cool!

An area in which the Galaxy S26 Ultra has scored an upgrade is the charging. Samsung has put 60W wired charging support on the Galaxy S26 Ultra (up from the 45W on the previous models), which is a great upgrade to have. 

Sadly, Samsung hasn't implemented the full scope of the Qi2 standard, so it comes with no magnetic attachment functionality on the back. 

The Pixel 10 Pro XL comes with 45W wired and 25W wireless charging. It supports Qi2 and introduced its Pixelsnap system for magnetic accessory attachment, which is compatible with MagSafe.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra doesn't aim to change what worked well for the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Instead, the goal here is to improve many of the key areas, like display, performance, camera, and charging speeds. 

That's fine, and while we'd have loved a larger battery inside, the new phone shapes up to be a good upgrade target for users of the Galaxy S22 Ultra and older devices, which are nearing the end of their shelf life.

The same applies to the Pixel 10 Pro XL, which is a continuation rather than an evolution over the Pixel 9 Pro XL. Google doesn't like making stark moves, so the gap between the Pixel 9 Pro XL and the Pixel 10 Pro XL is pretty much what we should brace for in the coming years.

Either way, both will be among the best top Android flagships you'd be able to get in the US in early 2026, with the Pixel having the benefit of already being on the shelves.