Samsung’s Galaxy S27 Ultra may fix the privacy screen brightness flaw

Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police Published Nov 4, 2026, 12:00 AM EST Jade Bryan is a Feature Author at Android Police with over a decade of tech reviews and news reporting experience, stretching back to the Symbian era and the early days of Android. He covers the breadth of the mobile industry, specializing in operating system deep-dives, app testing, and hardware analysis. In his spare time, you can find him tinkering with his Android devices and wearables, seeking ways tech can improve daily life. He also enjoys playing MMORPGs, traveling, or feeding stray cats and dogs. Sign in to your Android Police account The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra was the first to feature a built-in privacy screen. Early reception praised its protection from shoulder surfing, but users later found trade-offs with Privacy Display. One is that enabling Privacy Display affects display legibility, including brightness. Samsung appears to have acknowledged these issues, and it could finally address Privacy Display's major bottlenecks in the upcoming Galaxy S27 Ultra. New brighter Privacy Display According to SamMobile, the Galaxy S27 Ultra will feature an "upgraded" Privacy Display which is brighter than the Galaxy S26 Ultra's panel. It wasn't specified whether this would deliver substantially higher brightness to solve the current generation's image-quality woes. Benchmarks and reviews, including our test, show the first-generation Privacy Display significantly reduces brightness when enabled. Another display quality that impacts the Galaxy S26 Ultra was screen discoloration. Some units reportedly exhibited a reddish or pinkish tint in normal mode, more visible when on a white background. Many affected users assumed it was permanent. The South Korean giant later confirmed this behavior and said it was a temporary effect of using Privacy Display. It released a software update that improves the color shift on these displays. Samsung Privacy Display coming to non-Ultra The outlet added that Samsung's Galaxy S27 Pro will also feature Privacy Display. It's unclear whether this is the same enhanced panel version mentioned for the Galaxy S27 Ultra, which will offer higher brightness. If this materializes, it will be the first time Samsung offers the feature outside the Ultra range, after keeping it exclusive to the S26 Ultra this year. This also suggests the vanilla Galaxy S27 and S27+ will get only standard displays, though they might still see upgrades over their predecessors. Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police Based on what we've heard, the Galaxy S27 Pro will sit between the Ultra and base model. It will be more compact than the Plus and likely offer better hardware specs, such as a more versatile camera or a larger battery based on the latest certification. Additionally, certification suggests the Galaxy S27 Pro could use more efficient, faster LPDDR6 memory like the S27 Ultra and could get configurations of up to 1TB, while the vanilla sticks with LPDDR5X and a max 512GB configuration. Third-party renders also show the S27 Pro and Ultra will feature a new design with a rectangular camera island at the back. However, all these perks could make the Pro pricier than the non-Pro models. Early Galaxy S27 release date Samsung is expected to accelerate the Galaxy S27 launch by about a month compared with its usual cadence and the Galaxy S26 series. The company might announce the flagship series at the end of January or early February 2027, a few months from now. The release date should follow. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra 8/10 SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 RAM 12GB / 16GB Storage 256GB / 512GB / 1TB Battery 5,000mAh The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra features the world's first built-in privacy screen. Check the latest offers and buy it a lower price.