Best of all, because it’s integrated, you can customize Privacy Display when it’s turned on through the app. Mine turns on automatically for select messaging apps, banking apps, and for notifications, and there’s no visible indication when looking directly at the phone that Privacy Display is on or not (unless you tilt the screen slightly).
You still can see screen from all sides with Privacy Display, it is lighter and harder to identify content. For maximum effect, you can enable Advanced Privacy Protection through the quick settings menu, which makes it almost impossible to read the screen from the sides. You don’t want to use that mode all the time because the screen appears to be removed, but it’s great for when you want to be more private. Strangely, Samsung doesn’t let you configure this extra layer to turn on automatically with specific apps—it’s always a manual toggle.
I’ve seen some complaints online about Privacy Display affecting screen quality, but I have to disagree. Then again, the first thing I did when setting up the phone was maximum screen resolution up to Quad HD+ and also set the color to Vivid. I haven’t seen any fuzzy text, and the brightness hasn’t been a problem for me either.
Yes, you can buy a cheap privacy screen saver and add it to any phone, but sometimes you do it you want someone close to you—whether a friend or family member—to be able to read the screen beside you. Or maybe the phone is on the table, and you want to lazily scroll through TikTok while trying to look at work. That’s where a standard privacy screen saver won’t help, as it prevents you from seeing your own screen, but Samsung’s solution comes close to that. Now, I wish every smartphone had a privacy screen.
You don’t need to do anything illegal or highly sensitive to justify having this feature. Maybe you want your conversation with a loved one to be private. Maybe you’re verifying login and don’t want anyone else to see the code. Or you open your banking app, and you don’t want anyone to check your checking account. It’s just nice to have some privacy.
Telephone
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Photo: Julian Chokkattu
Samsung has made its Ultra smartphone more like the regular Galaxy S26 and S26+, with rounded corners instead of the boxy look of its predecessors. (It’s still the only one of the lot with an integrated S Pen.) The overall design language is still cool, and the phone’s muted colors aren’t fun (you can buy iPhone 17 Pro in orange for crying out loud!).
