Discussion
Review: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra
malfist: Yeah, watch out for those nosy people looking over your shoulder at your phone, they're spying on you.Please ignore all the data mining we're doing on your phone and please don't make us continually harass you first thing in the morning every morning to accept new terms and conditions. (For what it's worth, my Fold 7 harasses me to accept two sets of updates to terms and conditions first thing in the morning every morning)
throwaway270925: Two problems can be concerning at the same time!
mosselman: This phone costs 1700 euros here... 1700 (Netherlands)! That is the price of a gaming laptop!Everything has become so incredibly expensive it just isn't fun to buy anything anymore.My iPhone 11's FaceID broke a few weeks ago and despite that I think I will just stick with it with today's phone prices.
throwa356262: Remove your Samsung account.It is needed for a bunch of things including all bixby stuff (which is admittedly starting to get useful) but those constant ToS updates can drive a man mad.If any Samsung employees are reading this: whoever is pushing those ToS changes is probably a on Apples payroll ;)
malfist: If I sign out, samsung nukes step tracking and basically neuters my watch's health metrics.
zugi: There are a bunch of free or cheap alternative apps. Probably not as smoothly integrated, but years ago a change to Samsung's terms popped up in the health app; I saw it said they could do anything they want with my private health data, so I rejected the terms and stopped using it.
zugi: I've had Samsung phones for years and never made a Samsung account. Every few weeks my phone suggests signing in or accepting new terms and conditions, and I refuse.I know Google is mining my information, but I convince myself I'm "sticking it to the man" and taking at least one small stand...
mortenjorck: I was hoping, this being Wired, the article would have at least a surface-level technical description of how a software-defined privacy filter works, but alas.How does it work? I'm guessing it's some kind of extension of the LCD polarizer, but all I can find online are explanations of the software like in the Wired article.
throwaway270925: Its not a filter or layer, its the pixels themselves. Half are normal wide viewing angle pixels, the other half are pixels with a much more narrow viewing angle. When activated they just ... switch off the normal ones.See for example:https://gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s26_ultra-review-2939p3....Or from the official Samsung presentation:https://youtube.com/shorts/qnUVGPkeCCc
TheRoque: Basically half of the pixels are polarized, the others are not, when you activate the privacy mode, only the polarized pixels remain, so you can see the screen only looking straight.I got this explanation for the mkbh video: https://youtu.be/nfHRMqqO578?t=141&si=iEhVrdCuLN0fkasd which illustrates it very well.
josalhor: People use their phone today to: Manage 100k+,1M+ bank accounts, 2FA, secret messaging, sensitive media, medication, credentials and more. This privacy feature makes a lot of sense. Give it a couple of iterations and I think this will be the standard in business. It never made sense to me the trust that we put on no one looking at the contents of a display at the same time as us.
throwaway270925: > 1700 eurosRight, thats the top specced 1TB version isnt it?Amazon Germany has the basic 256g version for 1200€
oytis: Still a phone for over 1000€ is crazy
abluentalpaca: This chip is faster in Geekbench than the Ryzen 3900X system I just upgraded. At the time, this was at the top-end for multithreading performance, with a 105W TDP. Now outclassed by a phone.
automatic6131: I just don't believe these geekbench numbers represent real world performance numbers. Like... Firefox compile times or late game civ 6 turn times or such things
arrowleaf: Are these comments from 2018? 'Pro' models of iPhones have been $999 or more, not adjusted for inflation, at their lowest tier since 'Pro' has been a thing. I would expect the same of a Samsung 'Ultra' flagship?
ariwilson: yes because a phone cpu cannot cool itself to keep at peak performance like a desktop processor can
chistev: What gaming laptop?
layer8: Like these: https://www.coolblue.nl/en/laptops/gaming-laptops/filter/pri...
layer8: IPhones go from $599 up to $1999.
