Samsung keeps redesigning the Galaxy Ultra in small, restless steps, and after five years the phone still has no settled face.

Put an iPhone 12 Pro next to an iPhone 16 Pro and most people would struggle to tell which is which. Do the same with a Galaxy S22 Ultra and a Galaxy S26 Ultra and you see two different ideas of what an Ultra should be. Each year Samsung changes the corners, the frame, the camera housing or the S Pen. None of these changes is huge alone. Together, they leave buyers unsure what the Ultra actually stands for.

Five Ultras, five different ideas

The Ultra has changed something visible in every generation since it absorbed the Galaxy Note in 2022, and several of those changes were later undone.

Year	Model	What changed in the design
2026	Galaxy S26 Ultra	Titanium dropped for aluminum; much rounder corners; a raised camera island returns; thinner (7.9 mm) but taller and wider
2025	Galaxy S25 Ultra	Boxy Note corners rounded off; slimmer body; S Pen loses its Bluetooth remote features
2024	Galaxy S24 Ultra	Titanium frame introduced; screen goes fully flat
2023	Galaxy S23 Ultra	Note-style body kept, edges and curves softened
2022	Galaxy S22 Ultra	Note-style square body, built-in S Pen, floating camera rings with no bump

The pattern is the problem. Titanium arrived in 2024 as a premium selling point and was gone two years later. The camera bump was removed in 2022 as a signature look, then brought back in 2026. The squared-off Note shape that defined the Ultra is now being rounded toward the regular Galaxy S phones. Reviewers have noted the S26 Ultra is drifting further from the Note-style design.