You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra looks a lot like the last four models. That’s because it does, right down to its general design and rear camera layout. But on Samsung’s latest flagship phone, some stealthy upgrades are hidden beneath its classic blocky silhouette that might go unnoticed by the casual observer. Those help make this year’s release feel like a better deal than its most recent predecessor. It remains rather expensive, starting at the same $1,300 as before, but considering the price of RAM these days, that almost feels like a blessing. So while it won’t hit you over the head with monumental changes year over year, it’s subtly one of the best Ultras we’ve gotten in the past half-decade.

Samsung / Engadget

While the S26 Ultra might not wow you with a ton of major improvements, it brings subtle upgrades across the board along with a new standout display for anyone who cares about privacy.

Pros

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• Superb Privacy Display
• Great performance
• Strong battery life
• Wider aperture for main and 5x telephoto lenses

Cons

• Expensive
• S-Pen is unchanged
• No built-in magnetic ring for Qi2 accessories

Design: Back to aluminum

After dabbling with titanium frames on the last two Ultras, Samsung returned to aluminum for 2026. The company says this makes it easier to color-match the phone’s chassis to the Corning Gorilla Armor 2 panels on the front and back, though it’s incredibly difficult to see the impact on my black review unit. Elsewhere, the company shaved a few grams off its total weight and a few millimeters off its thickness (7.9mm and 214 grams), but even when directly comparing the new model to last year’s S25 Ultra (8.2mm and 218 grams), that difference is basically imperceptible. I almost think the S26 Ultra’s extra sleekness was just so that people would stop saying the Z Fold 7 is lighter than Samsung’s most premium traditional candybar-style handset.

As always, there’s a built-in storage slot for Samsung’s S-Pen, which is essentially a carbon copy of what we got last year without any functional changes. However, because the phone’s corners are more rounded than ever, one small peculiarity is that now there’s a right and wrong way to insert it. No matter what you do, the stylus will stay put, but if you don’t align the curve on the end of the S-Pen with the shape of the phone’s corner, it just doesn’t look right.

Display: Now with more privacy

The S26 Ultra’s 6.9-inch screen is easily its most undercover upgrade because it sports essentially the same specs as last year. You still get 2,600 nits of peak brightness with a variable 120Hz refresh rate and a max resolution of 3,120 x 1,440. The secret is that with the touch of a button, you can activate Samsung’s Privacy Display, which effectively stops others from spying on your screen when viewed from acute angles (both from the side and up and down).

When you turn the Privacy Display on and look at the phone less than head-on, everything sort of fades to black. Depending on the angle, you may still see an outline of UI elements and some bright spots depending on your content, but the wider you go, the fainter things get. The way it works is that the phone has two sets of subpixels, narrow and wide, the latter of which get turned off when the feature is active. And if you’re really concerned about people snooping on you, there’s an extra level called Maximum Privacy Protection that makes almost everything completely go gray, though there are trade-offs for this.

When using the standard Privacy Display mode, there’s very little impact on image quality and brightness, so it’s not that big of a deal to leave it on all the time. If you look closely, you may notice what appears to be a small drop in resolution, though this requires some serious pixel peeping and good eyesight. But with maximum protection on, there’s a noticeable drop in contrast and luminance that, for me, isn’t worth the increased privacy.

Thankfully, there’s a third option, which is to have the phone selectively activate Privacy Display under certain conditions. You can have it automatically turn on when you get notifications or open selected apps (like for banking or authenticators), which is what I prefer. The phone can also enable the feature when you need to enter a PIN, pattern or password. The caveat is that this only applies to system-level prompts like your lock screen. Theoretically, there’s no reason the S26 Ultra can’t do this anytime you’re presented with a password or PIN prompt, but every app needs to be optimized properly, so that isn’t a thing just yet. Regardless, it’s a powerful tool that can prevent people from gleaning sensitive info while you’re and about and I really hope it becomes standard inclusion on all premium phones going forward.

Performance and software: More speed and AI

The main engine powering the S26 Ultra is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip for Galaxy along with 12GB or 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. Its biggest strength lies in its improved NPU, which is 39 percent more powerful than the previous generation, paving the way for improved AI-based features. That said, the rest of the processor provides some nice but not especially impressive gains in processing speed. Its CPU boasted 19 percent better performance while its GPU is around 24 percent beefier. In Geekbench 6, this translated to a multi-core score of 11,240 for its CPU (up from 9,828 on the S25 Ultra) and a GPU score of 25,403 (up from 19,863). Granted, it’s not like its predecessor ever struggled with performance, but it’s still worth noting that this is essentially as fast as an Android phone can get right now.

Of course, as we progress deeper into the AI era, Samsung has come up with a boatload of new and improved AI-powered tools as well. The most useful of these is Photo Assist, which serves as a one-stop shop for all your editing and content creation needs. In addition to fixing things like reflections or deleting objects in an image, you can use natural language text prompts to generate completely new elements like hats for your pets or pretty much anything else you can think of. And if that’s not enough, there’s also Samsung’s Creative Studio, which is a playground for making all sorts of fun digital art like wallpapers, stickers and greeting cards.

Elsewhere, there’s also an improved document scanner and a call screener that’s better at blocking spam and robocalls. All told, they’re welcome upgrades and they work rather well. Samsung even borrowed an idea from Google’s Magic Cue with its Now Nudge feature, which can surface relevant photos based on context anytime you’re using the Samsung keyboard. Unfortunately, what’s arguably the S26 Ultra’s coolest new feature, Automated App Actions, isn’t available for another week. But the bigger issue is that almost all of these features are things we’ve seen before on rival devices like the Pixel 10 Pro. While they’re nice to have, it’s gotten to the point where these tools are more like table stakes for high-end phones nowadays instead of being reasons you might want to upgrade.

Cameras: The same sensors with some larger apertures

While the sensors on the S26 Ultra haven’t changed since the previous model, Samsung didn’t completely forget about photo upgrades. Alongside its 10-megapixel 3x telephoto, 50MP ultra-wide and 12MP selfie cam, its 200MP main cam and 50MP 5x telephoto camera have larger apertures at f/1.4 and f/2.9, respectively (up from f/1.7 and f/3.4). So on top of already being able to take excellent photos during the day, the UItra’s primary shooter is noticeably better at night.

In a shot of some Transformers in a dimmed room, the S26 Ultra basically matched what I shot with a Pixel 10 Pro — aside from some minor differences in white balance. Details were sharp and Samsung’s photo was less noisy, which is due in part to a change in the phone’s image processing. But the most impressive example of the Ultra’s improved picture quality was when I took a very challenging backlit shot of a Grogu doll, in which the S26 did a better job of exposing Baby Yoda’s face compared to the P10 Pro. So even without new sensors, Samsung has managed to make an already great main camera just a bit better.

Battery life

The Galaxy S26 Ultra features a 5,000mAh battery, just like what we got on the previous model. That means it’s largely relying on power efficiency gains from its new chip for improved longevity, which it delivers, but it’s not a major leap. On our local video rundown test, the S26 Ultra lasted 30 hours and three minutes, which is only about half an hour longer than before. That said, considering the only phones that have fared better were the OnePlus 15 and 15R, it’s hard to be upset about its overall runtime.

As for charging, the Ultra has gotten a big leap in speed (assuming you have compatible power adapters) compared to its less expensive siblings. When using a cable, it now supports up to 60 watts versus 45 watts for the S26+ or just 25 watts for the base S26. And it’s a similar story when charging wirelessly, with the Ultra now capable of hitting 25 watts when plopped on a pad compared to 20 watts for the S26+ and 15 watts for the S26.

The major annoyance is that Samsung still hasn’t given any members of the S26 family a built-in magnetic ring for Qi2 charging or other magnetic accessories. The company claims this was done to help keep the phone as thin as possible, but honestly, I thought we had gotten over the desire for needless sleekness long ago. Sure, you can add that functionality back in by choosing the right case, but that’s not a very premium experience and I sincerely hope this is the last time Samsung makes this omission on its flagship phone line.

Wrap-up

There’s a strange feeling I often get when testing phones. After I got everything updated and set up the way I like, I noticed it even more with the S26 Ultra. The issue is that despite using a brand new device with shiny hardware, better performance and a more refined design, I’m still largely doing the same things and using the same apps as I was before (like Google Maps, Gmail and whatever my go-to mobile games are at the moment). This means my daily flow is basically unchanged from device to device.

However, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice things like higher framerates while gaming, sharper and more well-exposed photos at night and helpful suggestions like when the phone surfaces relevant photos in the middle of a text conversation. This goes double for the S26 Ultra, whose biggest upgrade — the Privacy Display — is something meant to stop other people from snooping at what you’re doing. When it’s on, you probably won’t even be able to tell, which is kind of the point.

There’s no doubt that the S26 Ultra is an improvement over last year’s phone. It’s faster, it takes better low-light photos and thanks to all of its new AI features, the handset feels smarter too. But it takes a discerning eye to spot and feel all these differences, particularly if you’re upgrading from a device that’s only a year or two old. So while the S26 Ultra remains the top pick as a phone that can do pretty much everything really well, in the grand scheme of things, it’s more of a stealthy, undercover update than an eye-catching new crown jewel.

The startup is carving a niche in the pet food industry by doing good

The global pet food industry has long been dominated by multinational giants like Hill’s and Eukanuba. And for decades, pet owners have been hauling 10-20kg bags of dry kibble from brick-and-mortar stores—lugging them home, dragging them upstairs, and finding space for them in already-cramped kitchens.

It was this exact hassle that sparked an idea for two friends.

Ryan Black, 34, and Chris Lee, 40, were living and working in Hong Kong when they began questioning why buying dog food had to be so cumbersome and whether it could instead be convenient, nutritionally robust, and purpose-driven all at once.

The answer to that became Buddy Bites, a door-to-door philanthropic dog food brand built on a simple promise: for every 2kg of dry kibble sold, 1kg is donated to animal shelters. Since launching in 2020, the company has fulfilled over 150,000 orders and built a growing base of customers—carving out market share from dominant players while feeding shelter dogs one meal at a time.

We spoke with the founders of Buddy Bites to learn more about their business and how they are reshaping the pet food market.

It all started over dinner

Growing up in the United Kingdom—Ryan in Edinburgh and Chris in Cheshire—the two never crossed paths until years later at a football club, when both were living and working in Hong Kong.

At the time, they were firmly planted in corporate careers. Chris was in financial services recruitment, while Ryan was in real estate finance and had just completed his MBA. But even then, the latter had been toying with the idea of launching a direct-to-consumer brand.

Over dinner one evening, in early 2020, Ryan and his girlfriend (now wife) were at Chris’s apartment when they noticed a 15kg bag of dog food sitting in the corner of the kitchen. Ryan casually remarked that buying dog food in such large bags was cumbersome, and it wasn’t always easy to know exactly what went into them.

The comment was offhand, but it stuck with them. What if they could build a subscription-based pet food brand that not only delivered premium nutrition directly to homes, but also did good—supporting dog shelters along the way? The idea carried extra weight: both founders had adopted rescue dogs themselves and knew firsthand the challenges shelters face.

Six months later, after researching potential partners and developing its proprietary kibble, Buddy Bites was born, bootstrapped by Chris and Ryan.

From day one, the founders’ philosophy was clear: simple online ordering, free delivery across Hong Kong, premium nutritious kibble formulated with veterinarians, and a non-negotiable philanthropic cause: for every 2kg of pet food sold, 1kg would be donated to shelters.

The subscription-based business model was also an obvious choice for Buddy Bites. Pet owners no longer had to worry about running out of food—once they subscribed, deliveries arrived regularly, hassle-free, straight to their door.

“We’re sure all pet owners have encountered at least once in their lives—running out of food with no spares ready to go,” said Ryan. “As the world becomes more focused on convenience, there’s no reason this shouldn’t extend to your dog’s food. The subscription element was a no-brainer.”

A formula that resonated

That year, Buddy Bites launched with just two products: a mixed kibble for puppies and a duck-flavoured option for adult dogs.

Given that the founders had no background in pet nutrition, they brought in vets and nutritionists from across Europe to help formulate their recipes.

The business began to gain traction when its first shelter partner, Catherine’s Puppies (which is also where Chris and Ryan adopted their rescue dogs), posted about Buddy Bites’ mission on Facebook—highlighting the pledge to donate pet food to shelters.

Within two weeks, they had 70 orders. “That was a real light bulb moment for us,” Chris said. “People were very keen to support shelters through us. We thought we might be onto something.”

In a market increasingly driven by millennials and Gen Z consumers—demographics known to care more about both nutrition and social impact—Buddy Bites hit on a formula that resonated.

The business also listened closely to customer feedback. As such, requests for fish-based kibble and non-poultry options eventually led to salmon and lamb kibble variants being launched. Today, the business’s range of offerings has expanded to four adult flavours, three lines of treats, and two shelf-stable toppers that do not need refrigeration—with more in the pipeline.

Each of Buddy Bites’ products undergoes extensive contaminant testing—screening for Salmonella, E. coli, and aflatoxins—to build trust in a sector where safety scares can devastate young brands, emphasised Chris.

Trust matters even more because the pet food industry is overwhelmingly dominated by large pet food brand players with many sub-brands under them.

Feeding 10 million meals without sinking the business

Despite early growth, the founders continued working full-time jobs and took no salary from Buddy Bites for about a year. By 2022, both had quit their day jobs to focus on the business full-time as demand grew.

After building a strong business in Hong Kong, Chris and Ryan looked south and established a presence in Singapore in 2022.

Today, Buddy Bites donates around 20,000 kg of food each month across the two markets. Since its launch, the company has donated more than 10 million meals to shelters.

But how does the company manage to donate so much while staying afloat? The answer lies in its business model.

While most pet food brands rely on long distribution chains, Buddy Bites keeps things lean by delivering primarily straight to customers. Beyond a small retail footprint in Hong Kong and stockists such as Little Farms and Singpet in Singapore, the company’s sales remain largely direct.

Fewer middlemen, according to the founders, mean tighter margins, more pricing control, and room to donate. “We think we can bring a better product to market at a reasonable price point and still have the ability to give back in the process,” Chris said.

Although the price of Buddy Bites’ dog food starts at S$29.60 for 2kg of kibble per month on a subscription (one-time purchases cost about 20 % more), which is pricier than offerings from pet food giants, customers are drawn by the transparency of ingredients, the convenience of doorstep delivery, and the chance to support shelters.

Since launching, the company has fulfilled over 150,000 orders. To fund further expansion, Buddy Bites has completed four fundraising rounds, raising around US$2 million to fuel its growth.

Beyond just providing meals

Currently, Buddy Bites works regularly with 15 shelters in Hong Kong and seven in Singapore, such as SOSD Singapore, Mdm Wong’s Shelter and Just4Paws, amongst other ad hoc donations. As of now, SOSD is Buddy Bite’s largest beneficiary, receiving 1,200kg of dog food every month.

If you told us five years ago that we’d be covering almost all the shelters in Singapore and Hong Kong, we’d be absolutely over the moon. The affinity to donation and animal welfare is clearly driving a decent portion of our growth.

Ryan Black, founder of Buddy Bites

For some shelters, the impact is significant and goes beyond feeding mouths.

Many, especially less well-known ones, struggle to keep the lights on. Operating on tight budgets, they are often run by volunteers and are heavily reliant on donations to cover rent, electricity, and mounting veterinary bills that have increased by more than 30% since 2022.

With food being one of shelters’ biggest recurring expenses, reducing that burden allows funds to be redirected toward medical care and rehabilitation.

In that sense, Buddy Bites is not just a donor. In some cases, it becomes part of a shelter’s operating backbone, Chris emphasised.

The relationship between Buddy Bites and animal shelters is mutually rewarding.

In return for food donations, shelters often share Buddy Bites’ mission on social media, helping raise awareness of the brand. At the same time, shelters receive a steady supply of food, allowing dogs to maintain a consistent diet—something crucial to their health and well-being.

The philanthropic loop also doubles as a customer acquisition engine.

To further raise its profile on top of donations, Buddy Bites also regularly hosts pop-ups at events such as Barkfest and Pet Expo in 2025, as well as adoption and fundraising drives for shelters in Singapore and Hong Kong. 

Last year, the business also partnered with Far East to launch a semi-permanent mini dog park at One Holland Village in 2025, which will remain open until the end of 2026. Hosting events at the park has helped grow Buddy Bites’ visibility in Singapore, while strengthening the brand’s community presence.

What’s next for Buddy Bites

As it continues to grow, Buddy Bites is now setting its sights on a new market: Taiwan, with plans to expand there this year.

At the same time, the company is preparing to launch cat food, extending its 1kg-for-2kg donation philosophy to cat shelters as well. Many of the shelters they already support house both dogs and cats, and the founders observed that in markets like Hong Kong and Singapore, there are more cats than dogs.

While expanding into feline nutrition introduces new complexities, the founders find it to be crucial as it significantly broadens Buddy Bites’ impact on shelter animals.

For Chris and Ryan, the mission remains consistent: scale the business and grow the giving.

• Learn more about Buddy Bites here.
• Read more articles we’ve written on Singaporean startups here.

Featured Image Credit: Buddy Bites

The Xiaomi Vision GT is a visually stunning electric hypercar concept that was officially unveiled at the 2026 MWC in Barcelona. You may be familiar with Xiaomi from their phones and kitchen appliances, but this is a bit more unique in that it was designed by a company not known for producing high-performance vehicles, but it is now competing with brands such as Ferrari and Porsche, thanks to its inclusion in the Gran Turismo racing game series.

Designers went all out on this thing, giving every surface a major focus on airflow, as the body is literally formed like a water droplet, with a teardrop cockpit and carefully placed air ducts that allow air to flow smoothly from front to rear. There are no showy wings or spoilers to clutter up the lines; instead, the drag and downforce handling is elegantly integrated into the bodywork. Official numbers show that the car has a drag coefficient of 0.29, downforce of -1.2, and an aerodynamic efficiency score of 4.1, which is all about striking the perfect balance: low resistance for high speeds while simultaneously providing plenty of grip for tight turns.

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Special wheel coverings known as Accretion Rims have vortice patterns and semi-transparent parts that reveal turbine-like fins inside for brake cooling, adding to the list of brilliant engineering. Furthermore, magnets hold them in place while the car moves, preventing them from spinning around with the wheels, resulting in one less bit of drag. An Active Wake Control System is located at the back, and it simply employs micro-perforations surrounding the halo-shaped taillight to measure speed and angle and then alter airflow, allowing it to push turbulent air away without the use of any mechanical components.

Power is claimed to be an insane 1,900 horsepower, and it comes from Xiaomi’s 900-volt silicon carbide platform, which is most likely why it has such high output and quick response times. According to some accounts, it can reach speeds of up to 217 mph (350 km/h), and carbon-ceramic brakes are on board to handle all that power.

Inside, the car is a rather futuristic area that surrounds the driver in a continuous ring of surfaces; the seats, dashboard, and door panels all blend together in a “sofa racer” layout that appears far more enjoyable than your standard race-focused cockpit. The seats are constructed of 3D-knitted natural cloth for comfort and breathability, with no stiff buckets.The controls are also very cool, with a steer-by-wire wheel with tactile buttons and an aircraft-style throttle lever. Then there are the displays, which change to your needs using Xiaomi’s HyperVision system, from little track data to complete navigation depending on the mode you’re in. There’s also the Pulse assistant, a 360-degree intelligent aide who keeps an eye on you and your surroundings and will give you a touch on the shoulder (or a chime, a light, or a voice command, you get the idea) to let you know what’s going on.

Connections go deep inside Xiaomi’s ecosystem, as the automobile can communicate with your other Xiaomi products and AI to make your life easier, such as automatically adjusting lights and temperature based on your activity. XiaoAi handles vocal commands, while the MiMo model provides lifelike responses, but let’s be clear: this is only a concept designed for Gran Turismo 7, and its main function is to demonstrate what it can do; alas, no production version is currently planned.

One of the big surprises to come out of Sony’s recent showcase was the announcement of a sequel to 2021’s Kena Bridge of Spirits, the impressive debut from indie studio Ember Lab. If you missed the first game and want to catch up before its successor launches on PC and PS5 later this year, it’s coming to Switch 2 this spring.

The Switch 2 is very much in its port era, owing to publishers seizing the opportunity to take advantage of the new system’s popularity and improved graphical grunt. And while it’s hard to get too excited about a five-year-old game making its way to the latest Nintendo console, Kena’s gorgeous Pixar-lite aesthetic, cute critters and decidedly Zelda-y medley of combat, exploration and puzzle-solving make it a great fit for Switch 2.

If you missed it the first time around, Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a third-person action-adventure game that follows the eponymous Kena, a young spirit guide who helps wayward souls on their journey through to the afterlife. It has PS2 energy in the best possible way, and a deceptively deep combat system that will eventually catch you out if you don’t pay attention to enemy patterns.

While nothing about the game is particularly groundbreaking, Kena is a visual feast, which is unsurprising when you learn about Ember Lab’s roots in film animation. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it looks running on the Switch 2’s big, bright handheld display.

The Switch 2 version comes with the Anniversary DLC, which features Charmstones, Spirit Guide Trials, new outfits, and various accessibility features. You also get a New Game+ mode with even trickier encounters. It arrives this spring, with Kena: Scars of Kosmora due to launch later in 2026 on PS5 and PC.