Samsung snuck in a Galaxy S26 Ultra price hike you should know about

The big headline regarding the Galaxy S26 Ultra price on launch day has been that Samsung has kept the price constant. Indeed, the Galaxy S26 Ultra starts at $1,299 in the United States, just like the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

However, unless you looked closely and weighed all of the options with the ones offered last year, you may not have noticed that Samsung has increased the price on the higher storage models.

The $1,299 starting price is for the base model with 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage. If you want 512GB storage, the Galaxy S26 Ultra will cost $1,499. That's $80 more expensive than the 512GB Galaxy S25 Ultra which cost $1,419 last year.

If you want the top-of-the-line model with 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage, prepare to spend $1,799. It's a whopping $140 more expensive than the 1TB Galaxy S25 Ultra that was priced at $1,659.

Samsung is clearly taking some margin hit on the base model to avoid the hit that would come with increased prices across the board, as all of the price stories would have otherwise been about the hike.

Many customers prefer the higher storage variants since the Ultra phones don't have microSD card slots. To be fair 256GB, of which a major chunk is taken up by the OS, apps, etc, doesn't leave you with much for content, photos, videos, etc.

In case you don't want to spend more than last year, your option now is to either go for the base model or fork out more money for the other models. That's why it's best to take advantage of the pre-order offer as that gets you the most bang for your buck.