Samsung revealed its latest flagship, the Galaxy S26 Ultra, at its big launch event at the end of February 2026. The phone itself looks sublime, has great battery life and wonderful cameras, but many agree that it felt more like an “iterative” device rather than a big breakthrough year.
But one feature on the Galaxy S26 Ultra caught more attention than the rest: its new Privacy Display.
The Privacy Display effectively blocks the screen from certain angles, making it very difficult to see what’s going on, protecting your privacy at vital moments.
At MWC 2026, Samsung Display had its own stand featuring the Flex Magic Pixel, the tech behind the Privacy Display, with some additional implementations that every smartphone owner will want, not just S26 Ultra folks.
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Samsung has more Privacy Display modes ready to go
Notifications are just the start
Currently, the Samsung Privacy Display covers the entire screen and can also be configured to turn on when specific apps are open or block your notifications. It’s pretty useful already, but the Samsung Privacy Display showed a couple of new options that I think will make the feature even better.
First, Samsung showed the Privacy Display blocking out just the bottom of the screen, covering your keyboard area for when you’re entering your PIN, pattern, or so on. It’s a small improvement, but one that actually improves the Privacy Display. It’ll be useful for moments when you have to enter passwords for important services in public, like banking passwords.
The second is that the Privacy Display will eventually be able to cover just your Edge panel. This is also a small upgrade, which is nice, but I also think this is less useful.
It’s worth noting that currently, the Privacy Screen can cover your keyboard, but it’s all or nothing. This update will let you split the screen in half, keeping the top portion free.
These features are in development and coming soon, but they’re not quite ready just yet. But they’ll likely arrive in a future update.
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Privacy Display is great, but it’s all about the angles
Sometimes, it doesn’t quite work how you think
I tried out the Privacy Display on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra models at MWC 2026, and it looks pretty useful overall. Moving around the phone absolutely blocks out the screen, but it really depends on the angle.
For example, on the Samsung Display booth, the Privacy Display areas seemed to work really well from a wide range of angles. But then, while sitting in a conference hall for the launch of another smartphone, the person next to me was using a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra with the Privacy Display turned on.
They were trying to play a sneaky game of Balatro on their device during one of the slower moments, thinking the Privacy Display had their screen obscured. But from my angle, I could make out the cards and decks and see what was on the screen, much to their surprise.
So, while Samsung’s Privacy Display is a great option for protecting your data, it’s not foolproof.
