Note: Samsung updated the information for the parts we linked to after we published the teardown.
There are two kinds of phone privacy: One keeps hackers from reading your messages. The other keeps out the nosy neighbor on the plane. Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra actually tackles the second one, with a built-in privacy display that is weird, clever, and far more interesting than the usual annual pile of brighter-screen-faster-chip filler.
That made this teardown fun right away. It also made the repair story more irritating, because the S26 Ultra pairs some genuinely thoughtful design choices, like excellent battery removal and a modular USB-C port, with one of the ugliest screen repair paths in a flagship phone. The result is a phone full of good ideas, with a few especially costly ways to remind you Samsung still has not fully bought into repair.
The Screen: Biggest Flex, Biggest Flaw
The privacy screen is a 6.9-inch AMOLED, with what Samsung calls “Flex Magic Pixels.” Magic, maybe not, but cool physics, absolutely. In Privacy Mode, the full display or a portion of it restricts the angle at which light escapes, so the screen stays readable head-on and much less readable from the side. Turn the feature off, and the rest of the display behaves normally.
Unlike lower-tech solutions, such as privacy screen protectors that use a layer of ultra-thin strips that basically function like window blinds, the S26 Ultra’s screen can go stealth only under certain conditions. You might, for instance, want your bank and health apps to always be in Privacy Mode, while still being able to show your friends a meme.
Neat. Hardware changes are most satisfying when they make daily life a little better. But although the screen is the most interesting part of the phone, it’s also one of the worst parts to service.
We’ll come back to that. Let’s talk about what Samsung’s doing right first.
Galaxy Still Nails Battery Swaps (& a Few Other Repairs)
If you’ve opened a recent Galaxy Ultra, much of this interior will look familiar. That is not a complaint. Some of Samsung’s recurring choices are solid.
Back entry is still one of them. You need heat and the patience to work your way around the perimeter with a pick, and you’ve got to be careful when you approach the edge of the phone with the cameras. But once the rear glass separates, it comes away cleanly.
The battery is even better. Samsung’s plastic adhesive jacket is one of the nicer adhesive-based battery-removal systems in a mainstream phone right now. We, of course, always prefer reversible methods over adhesion, but this is a standout when comparing glue to other glue.
You peel four sides of the jacket up by hand, and out the battery comes. It’s far more pleasant than digging under a battery with solvent, and it’s simpler than Apple’s hot wire solution. This is what a consumable part should feel like to remove.
The charge port is another easy point in Samsung’s favor. USB-C ports wear out. They collect pocket lint, get stressed by bad cables, and spend years getting yanked around. On the S26 Ultra, the port lives on a modular daughterboard and comes out without unnecessary pain. That is exactly how a high-wear part should be handled, and they’ve used this design for some time. Again, Samsung’s got a leg up on Apple here: when we dug into the iPhone 17e last week, we were annoyed to find the port’s still buried much deeper in the device than it needs to be.
Take a peek at those modular pieces in this CT scan, courtesy our beloved Lumafield Neptune:
There are other nice touches too. The rear cameras are mostly individually modular. The motherboard comes out fairly cleanly. Samsung sticks with Phillips screws throughout, which is boring in the most welcome way possible. Even the power and volume buttons deserve a small round of applause. Once the motherboard is out, they are among the easiest buttons in the business to remove. Nobody buys a flagship because the button design is elegant, but buttons are also wear parts and a broken button shouldn’t make you scrap the phone.
Screen Repair Remains a Headache
But you know what’s way more likely to break than a button? The big panel of glass on the front of your phone, with its extra-fancy pixels.
Screen replacement on the S26 Ultra is rough. With enough heat, suction, patience, and acceptance that the original panel may not survive, you can get through it. That’s a terrible way to approach one of the most failure-prone parts on the phone. In our teardown, the layers of the display wanted to separate before the whole assembly wanted to come free. More heat eventually got things moving, but by then the screen was already cooked.
But we still killed a fancy Privacy Display S26 Ultra screen while getting to the selfie camera.
That is a bad outcome for any phone. It is especially bad for a phone whose display is the headline feature.
Samsung put real engineering effort into this panel. But the whole repair path is absurd, from the adhesive to buying parts. The company’s preferred answer appears to be full-frame replacement assemblies, often bundled with a battery attached. That drives up cost: BatteriesPlus is currently estimating a wallet-ouchy $399 for S26 Ultra screen repair; for comparison, Back Market’s refurbished S25s are going today for $426. How many people will choose repair when it’s so wildly expensive? Assemblies with extra parts you don’t really need to replace also add waste and make a common repair feel far more punishing than it should.
No matter how big Samsung’s market share is, it’s hard not to compare them to Apple. And this is where Apple’s starting to edge them out in repair-friendliness. While Samsung’s pretending nobody cares about screen repair, Apple keeps revisiting service access and internal layout. The iPhone Air held up better than many ultra-thin devices do. Samsung feels more stuck here. The S26 Ultra is very, very similar to the S25 Ultra, including in the places where we were hoping for improvement.
The Selfie Camera Is Fussy
The selfie camera is a smaller headache, but still worth calling out. Cameras can break, of course, and they can also get permanently fogged with condensation. (Related pro tip: If your brand new $1300 phone gets too hot, don’t wrap it in an ice pack, even if there’s a towel in the mix.)
In the S26 Ultra, the selfie camera sits slightly tucked under the motherboard now, and the epoxy situation around it is excessive. Heating and removing that module can separate the lens and sensor in a way that immediately destroys the camera.
The Parts Pipeline Is Miserable
Then there is the parts experience, which remains a mess. As far as we can tell, display, battery, back glass, and selfie camera parts are available for S25 Ultra and will probably be available for S26 in some form. Same thing with repair manuals. We actually thought the S25 repair manual was pretty decent.
But when it comes to parts, finding exactly what you need and feeling confident you bought the right thing is another story. Galaxy parts do not deliver here. Listings are murky. Naming is inconsistent. There is no useful external identifier to help confirm part compatibility. Samsung’s effort level is as close to zero as possible.
For one example, check out the official Samsung Parts listing for a part labeled Samsung Galaxy S25 Smart Phone Replacement Part – GH02 – 25580A. There’s no picture. It’s $6.95. It’s a part, what more do you need to know? The clearly-AI description says it’s good for you “whether you’re in need of a screen replacement, battery upgrade, or any other repair.” Really now? Great price if true.
Okay, fine. Let’s Google that part number. Maybe we can figure out what it is. Other sites are conflicted, one listing GH02-25580A as “bracket tape.” Another calls it “bottom microphone mesh.” Another splits the difference and calls it “tape sponge mesh.” Whatever it is, it seems unlikely that GH02-25580A is “the perfect solution” to needing a battery upgrade.
The whole process feels harder than it needs to be for a mainstream flagship from one of the biggest phone makers on earth.
That gap between “the manual exists” and “the repair program works” is important. A repair ecosystem is only as good as its weakest link. A nice PDF does not mean much if getting the right part feels like an online scavenger hunt.
You know who clearly labels Galaxy parts?
Yeah, you got it. This very website.
A Neat Trick, a Bad Repair, and a Very Samsung Score
The Galaxy S26 Ultra is an easy phone to admire. The display feature is smart. The battery design is excellent. The modular USB-C board is exactly the kind of choice we want to see more often. Parts of this phone suggest Samsung understands what repair-friendly hardware looks like. The company just keeps stopping short of fully committing to it.
The S26 Ultra earns a provisional 5 out of 10 repairability score, same as last year’s model.
We’re sad to see exactly the same problems with Samsung’s approach to repair that made us end our collaboration with them in 2024. But to be clear, there’s no grudge here. We’d love to see Samsung repair get better, and you don’t have to sell parts through us to get a good repairability score. This phone earned its measly grade on its own merits.
A great battery pull and a well-behaved charge port do not erase a brutal screen repair. A solid manual does not fix a lousy parts experience. Those contradictions define the S26 Ultra. It is an impressive flagship with a few genuinely thoughtful repair choices, paired with a handful of decisions that still make common fixes harder, riskier, and more expensive than they should be.
If Samsung wants people to keep their phones longer, the path is right there. Make the obvious repairs feel ordinary. Make parts easy to identify and easy to buy. Stop treating screen replacement like a punishment.
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