Samsung Galaxy S26 series is reportedly scheduled to launch globally on February 25.
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is expected to succeed this year's Galaxy S26 Ultra (pictured)
Photo Credit: Samsung
The Samsung Galaxy S26 series will reportedly be launched at a higher price than this year's Galaxy S25 lineup. Rising prices of key components of the phones are said to be the reason behind the anticipated price hike. Launched earlier this year, the Samsung Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and Galaxy S25 Ultra went on sale in India in February. Recently, a report indicated that the South Korean tech giant will host its Galaxy Unpacked event in late February next year, which is slightly later than the company's usual product launch timeline.
Citing industry sources, South Korean publication ETNews reports that the tech giant could launch its rumoured Samsung Galaxy S26 series at a higher price than this year's Galaxy S25 lineup. Samsung is reportedly taking this decision due to the higher cost of acquiring critical components for the flagship smartphones.
The report highlighted that a large portion of the costs is earmarked for buying chipsets and memory. However, since the prices of these key components have risen simultaneously, the cost of manufacturing handsets has increased. Hence, Samsung could be inflating the prices of the Galaxy S26 lineup, which is expected to include the vanilla Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26+, and Galaxy S26 Ultra, to still earn healthy margins.
To recap, this year's Samsung Galaxy S25 series went on sale in India in February. At the time of its launch, the standard Galaxy S25 was priced in India at Rs. 80,999 for the base variant with 12GB RAM + 256GB storage. Meanwhile, the higher-end option, offering 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, was priced at Rs. 92,999. The Galaxy S25+ was initially available at Rs. 99,999 and Rs. 1,11,999 for the 256GB and 512GB storage variants, respectively.
Samsung's current flagship phone, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, was launched in India at a starting price of Rs. 1,29,999 for the base variant with 256GB storage. On the other hand, the 512GB and 1TB storage options were priced at Rs. 1,41,999 and Rs. 1,65,999, respectively.
As previously mentioned, Samsung will reportedly host its Galaxy Unpacked launch event on February 25 next year in California's San Francisco. During the event, the company is expected to unveil the Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26+, and Galaxy S26 Ultra. If true, it would be the tech giant's first launch event in three years in the city, the last being held in 2023. After launching new phones in late January or early February for several years, Samsung reportedly postponed the launch schedule this year due to “product lineup adjustment”.
Moreover, the company is expected to equip its next line of flagship phones with its proprietary Exynos 2600 chip in select markets, which is reportedly built on a 2nm process. Meanwhile, in other regions, the Galaxy S26 lineup could be powered by Qualcomm's 3nm octa core Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset.
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