Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra to get a major display upgrade but there’s a catch

The Galaxy S25 Ultra (buy on Amazon) and the Galaxy S24 Ultra have impressive OLED screens that can max out at 2,600 nits, but the underlying technology is not the most efficient. That could change with the Galaxy S26 Ultra as Samsung is said to incorporate an upgraded technology and new materials that would make it even brighter and more energy efficient, however, the Galaxy S26 Pro and Edge models will be sadly left out.

According to a report by ET News (machine translated from Korean), Samsung Display has developed a new M14 material and will be using CoE or Color-filter-on-thin-film-encapsulation technology for the OLED panel in the Galaxy S26 Ultra. What this essentially means is that the panel will be thinner but also brighter and more power efficient. It is speculated that Apple is using the M14 material in its iPhone 17 series so the at least the Galaxy S26 Ultra will be able to stand toe to toe with them, if not surpass them.

Samsung uses the M13 material in its Galaxy S24 Ultra and the Galaxy S25 Ultra along with a polarizing layer. The phones are plenty bright already but because of the polarizing plates, the display panel is thicker and requires more power to reach high brightness levels. The CoE tech will replace these polarizing plates with a color filter and the internal reflections will be negated by a black Pixel Define Layer (PDL).

There have been reports of the CoE tech coming to next generation Galaxy S flagships in the past but the use of M14 material is new information. Notably, Samsung is not new to CoE as its foldables, since the Galaxy Z Fold 3, have had this OLED technology.

Unfortunately, the other phones in the series, the Galaxy S26 Edge and the Galaxy S26 Pro (reportedly the new base model) will miss out on this upgrade. The report states that these will stick to the older M13 material. It should be noted that Samsung has not shared any information on the new display technology being using in the Galaxy S26 Ultra so take this with a pinch of salt.