Another year, another glass slab.

Samsung just penciled in February 25 for the official reveal of the Galaxy S26, and the hype machine is already leaking oil. If you’ve been paying attention for the last decade, you know the drill. We get a stage, some high-production b-roll of urban professionals looking at their phones in coffee shops, and a series of numbers that are slightly higher than the numbers we saw last year.

This time, Samsung is leaning hard into the "new design" angle. From what the supply chain rumblings suggest, the rounded edges that defined the last few generations are mostly dead. The S26 is going sharp. Expect a frame so flat and industrial it might actually draw blood if you grab it too quickly out of your pocket. It’s a pivot back to the "monolith" aesthetic. Very 2012, very Kubrick. They’ll tell us it’s about ergonomics and structural integrity. In reality, it’s about making sure your S25 case doesn’t fit so you have to spend another sixty bucks on a piece of recycled silicone.

Under the hood, we’re looking at the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5. It’s fast. Of course it’s fast. It’s so fast that your scrolling on X will be 0.003 seconds smoother than it was on the S25. But here’s the friction: rumors suggest Samsung is finally killing off the 128GB base model for the standard S26, which sounds great until you see the price tag. Expect a $50 to $100 "standardization tax" across the board. You aren't getting more storage for free; you’re being forced to buy the upgrade you probably would have ignored otherwise.

Then there’s the "Galaxy Intelligence" play. Don't expect any hardware revolutions in the camera department. The sensors are largely stagnant, but the silicon is doing more heavy lifting. We’re talking about more aggressive post-processing that makes your dinner look like a Pixar movie and "predictive framing" that tries to guess where your dog is moving before it actually moves. It’s clever tech. It’s also a bit exhausting. We’re reaching a point where the phone isn’t capturing reality; it’s hallucinating a better version of it for your Instagram feed.

The Ultra model remains the behemoth for people who want to carry a literal computer in their pocket. It’s rumored to sport a new anti-reflective coating that actually works this time—unlike the "almost there" version on the S24. But the trade-off is the weight. If these leaks hold true, the S26 Ultra is going to be a dense, heavy brick of titanium and glass. It’s the kind of phone that requires a belt with extra loops.

Pre-orders open the moment the stream ends on the 25th. Samsung’s marketing team is already salivating over the "Reserve Now" buttons. They’ll offer you $50 in store credit, which is just enough to buy a charging brick that they stopped putting in the box three years ago. Or maybe a pair of Buds that will be discounted by 40% by Memorial Day. It’s a cynical cycle, but it works. People love the "free" credit even when they're dropping $1,300 on a device that looks 90% like the one they currently own.

The most interesting conflict isn’t the hardware, though. It’s the software support. Samsung is promising seven years of updates, which is a bold claim for a device with a battery that will likely start chemically waving the white flag by year four. They’re selling us a "forever phone" in a body designed for a two-year upgrade cycle.

If you’re sitting on an S23 or an S24, the February event will probably be a great reason to stay exactly where you are and wait for the price drop in August. Samsung makes the best hardware in the Android world, but they’ve run out of ways to make us care about it every twelve months. We’ve reached peak smartphone. The curves are gone, the bezels are invisible, and the processors are faster than our brains.

So, February 25. Mark your calendars if you need a new tax deduction or if you’ve managed to crack your current screen. Otherwise, it’s just another Tuesday in the valley of diminishing returns.

Is a slightly sharper corner really worth a four-figure hole in your wallet, or are we all just addicted to the smell of new factory plastic?