The Samsung Galaxy S26 series could be announced as soon as January, with new cameras and a battery boost

• The Samsung Galaxy S26 series might be announced in late January and ship in mid-February
• We're also hearing that only the Galaxy S26 Ultra might have a Snapdragon chipset
• Plus there could be slight upgrades to the cameras and batteries in some models

The rumored Samsung Galaxy S26 series launch date seems to be shifting ever closer, as we first heard these phones might not land until March, then a February 25 date was put forward, and now it seems they could be unveiled as soon as late January.

This is according to a report in Chosun (via Android Police), which claims to have learned from a Samsung insider that these phones will ship in mid-February, making an announcement in late January possible.

For reference, the Samsung Galaxy S25 series shipped roughly two weeks after it was announced, so assuming a similar gap here, a late January or very early February announcement would indeed make sense for a mid-February launch.

That said, since previous leaks suggested we might not see these phones until late February or even March, we’d still take this with a pinch of salt.

This isn’t the only information in Chosun’s report though, as the publication also claims that only the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra will have a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, with the base model and the Galaxy S26 Plus instead using Samsung’s in-house Exynos 2600 chipset.

This isn’t overly surprising news since Samsung often uses a mix of Exynos and Snapdragon chipsets, but it’s worth noting that this is a South Korean site, so it’s unclear whether the same split would apply everywhere. We’d speculate for example that the US will probably still get a Snapdragon chipset in all models, as is usually the case with flagship Samsung launches.

In any case, typically the Exynos versions of Samsung’s phones are slightly less powerful, but that might not be the case this year, with reports suggesting the Exynos 2600 could rival or even beat the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s performance, so if you do live somewhere that gets Exynos chipsets in some of these phones, it might not be such a bad thing.

New cameras and a bigger battery

In today’s final Samsung Galaxy S26 series news, we’ve also heard details of the possible camera and battery specs for the base and Plus models.

This comes from SmartPrix, which claims to have obtained the information through “detailed software analysis”.

According to the site, the Samsung Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26 Plus will both have new 50MP main sensors: that’s the same number of megapixels as their predecessors, so we'd be looking for a larger sensor for any major photography improvements.

They’re also said to have new 12MP telephoto cameras, up from their 10MP predecessors, but to stick with the same 12MP ultra-wide cameras as the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus.

For battery, we might see a 4,300mAh one in the Samsung Galaxy S26 and a 4,900mAh one in the Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus. The latter would be the same capacity as the current model, but that would be a slight boost for the former, up from the 4,000mAh offered in the Galaxy S25.

As ever we’d take all of this with a pinch of salt, but this isn’t the first time we’ve heard that these phones could be equipped with 12MP telephoto cameras.

We should find out all the confirmed specs in early 2026, and if this new rumored release date is right then we’ll have all the official information even sooner than we were expecting.

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