Samsung has been making the best smartphone displays in the market but there’s something exciting to look forward to with the upcoming Galaxy S26 Ultra. Besides having impressive outdoor visibility with reduced reflections on almost every iteration, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra appears to bring a new innovation that focuses on privacy.
Paired with the upcoming One UI 8.5, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is expected to come with Privacy Display which essentially works like a privacy screen protector.
When enabled, you can manually or automatically limit the viewing angles of the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s display, protecting your content from prying eyes. This would be very useful when viewing or typing sensitive content in crowded spaces.
Early versions of One UI 8.5 codes have initially revealed the Privacy Display feature but visuals from the Tips app have since confirmed the feature’s existence as shown above.
According to the description, the Privacy display makes your screen less visible when viewed from a side angle.
You can choose to turn it on manually or automatically depending on the set conditions such as launching banking or messaging apps, viewing photo gallery or notifications, and when the phone requires you to enter a PIN or password.
From the demo video, it appears that the Privacy Display feature works in both vertical and landscape orientations. It remains to be seen how this Privacy Display feature compares with the privacy screen protectors that are widely available on the market.
It is also worth noting that the feature would require a different kind of OLED display and it is very likely to be exclusive to the range-topping Galaxy S26 Ultra. However, there’s a possibility that Samsung could make this a standard feature across the Galaxy S26 lineup which is expected to launch sometime in February.
The Privacy Display innovation was first showcased during MWC 2024 where Samsung Display showed off its Flex Magic Pixel OLED technology. The technology adjusts the viewing angle of the display as a security feature so that it isn’t visible to the person next to you. Combined with AI, the technology can automatically detect the environment and increase security when needed, for example, when running banking applications in public.
You can see Samsung’s Flex Magic Pixel display in action below.
