Why Samsung's future flagship smartphone cameras may disappoint you

Samsung’s non-foldable flagship smartphone from last year, the Galaxy S24 Ultra, brought many upgrades over its predecessor. One of them was a new periscope camera, which was a 50MP sensor with a 5x optical zoom. The brand used the same camera for its current non-foldable flagship phone, the Galaxy S25 Ultra. 

Well, it looks the tech giant may use the same periscope camera for the next two iterations of smartphones in the lineup, the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Galaxy S27 Ultra.

On X, a popular tipster, @UniverseIce claims that Samsung is going to use the same 50MP periscope camera that has 1/2.52-inch sensor size, 0.7μm pixel size, and 5x optical zoom that is in the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Galaxy S25 Ultra for the non-foldable flagship phones it will launch in 2026 and 2027, the Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Galaxy S27 Ultra.

While it is a great camera, offering higher optical zoom than the periscope camera on Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro models, using it straight for four years might not be a good idea. That’s because consumers nowadays demand innovations and improvements almost every year.

That being said, there’s a lot of time between now and when Samsung launches these devices, and a lot could change in the meantime.