Testing the Galaxy S26 Plus at night exposes flagship smartphone cameras’ biggest mistake

Credit: Robert Triggs / Android Authority When shopping for the best camera phones in the business, we’re increasingly spoilt for choice, with the best flagships offering multi-sensor setups with huge megapixel counts, wide apertures, long-range zoom, and swathes of other flagship-tier camera technologies. However, move away from the very top-of-the-line camera phones, and it’s all too common to see that slightly cheaper flagships and mid-range phones are stuck with far less sophisticated camera arrays. The Pixel 11 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro are good exceptions to this trend because they share the same hardware as their even more expensive XL and Max siblings, though the regular Pixel 11 and iPhone 17 miss out on some features.

The same can’t be said for Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Plus , however, which is a pale imitation of the Ultra. I’ve been dabbling back in with Samsung’s flagship phones in recent weeks and was having trouble putting my finger on exactly why the Plus felt like such a mediocre camera package — until I took another look at the spec sheet.