Galaxy S26 Ultra Beats 5 Older Samsung Flagships by 10 Seconds in PhoneBuff Speed Test
Updated
Updated · Wccftech · May 23
Galaxy S26 Ultra Beats 5 Older Samsung Flagships by 10 Seconds in PhoneBuff Speed Test
4 articles · Updated · Wccftech · May 23
PhoneBuff’s six-phone speed test put the Galaxy S26 Ultra first at 4 minutes 42 seconds, 10 seconds faster than the Galaxy S25 Ultra and well ahead of the S24 Ultra’s 5:01.
AI workloads widened the gap, with the S26 Ultra’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, stronger GPU and NPU, and software improvements cutting processing time despite Samsung largely keeping Ultra models at 12GB of RAM.
Older models clustered much lower: the S23 Ultra finished in 6:28, while the S21 Ultra and S22 Ultra trailed at 6:53 and 6:56, pointing to chipset and cooling limits more than memory differences.
The result suggests Samsung’s yearly spec upgrades are translating into measurable real-world gains, though the smallest deltas were between the three most recent Ultra generations.
Does the Galaxy S26 Ultra's elite AI speed justify its price when daily performance gains are minimal?
How will the S27 Ultra's rumored 2nm chip and massive battery reshape the future of smartphone capabilities?
As phone AI power explodes, how can app developers innovate without abandoning users on older hardware?