I Used This Samsung Phone to Identify Outfits on "The Devil Wears Prada 2" Red Carpet

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra ($1,500)

"The S26 Ultra was released to much fanfare, given some major upgrades to the flagship Samsung device — most notably, the expansive incorporation of Galaxy AI features. But first: the phone itself. It's sleek, and comes in beautiful colors like Sky Blue and Cobalt Violet. Like other Samsung phones, the camera on the S26 Ultra is extremely impressive. There's even a new low light mode that allows you to capture photos at night. We tested it out at a dinner at Filoli Gardens, and it allowed me to see the beautiful grounds way better than I could with my own eyes, as well as get a super crisp shot of the moon.

One of the more delightful new features is Privacy Display: a setting you can turn on and off that makes your screen 'private' to anyone but you. My partner has a screen protector that does this, but he can never turn it off — which makes it difficult when he's trying to show me memes. This feature from Samsung allows you to turn it on when you want your screen to be visible and off when you don't (hello, anytime I'm riding a MUNI bus). Using it makes you go: why don't all phones have that?

As someone who's also admittedly a noob when it comes to AI, there were some immediate features I really appreciated about the S26. You can use Galaxy AI to do things like organize your texts, add events to your calendar, and give you a personalized daily briefing, but my favorite feature — and the one I use the most when it comes to the phone — is Photo Assist. You can simply type in what you want the AI to change about any given photo (say, erase a stranger in the background), and it works its magic. In the below example, we'd gone to the Palace of Fine Arts right around dusk, with fog descending all around us. I asked Photo Assist to change the photo to the daytime, and voilá." — Lena Felton, senior special projects director