Galaxy S26 Ultra leak test suggests “Privacy Display” may not stop shoulder-surfing in real life

Samsung is pitching the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s Privacy Display as the fix for people peeking at your phone in public, but an early leak test is already poking holes in that promise.

The latest clip making the rounds comes from Russian tech YouTuber Wylsacom, who posted a 27-minute Galaxy S26 Ultra video ahead of today’s official launch. If that leaker name sounds familiar, he is the exact same person who accurately leaked the Apple M4 MacBook Pro and the M5 iPad Pro. User Noah Cat pointed out this interesting track record on X.

The video is also being amplified on X by Out of Galaxy, who points to Wylsacom’s quick “real life” style checks where someone sitting to the side could still read the screen for the most part.

That matters because Privacy Display, at least as described in earlier One UI 8.5 leaks, is supposed to narrow viewing angles so off-axis viewers see little to nothing, kind of like a built-in privacy screen protector.

Samsung even surfaced the feature’s Quick Settings toggle in a Good Lock screenshot earlier, which helped cement that it is not just a rumor.

What the Wylsacom test suggests is that in common shoulder-surfing situations, like a friend or stranger sitting next to you, the viewing cone may still be wide enough that text stays readable unless the effect is much stronger. In his testing, his friend was easily able to read text on the screen from various positions. And when he handed over the phone to his friend, he confirmed that he was able to see content on the screen from some different angles.

Adding to that lackluster experience, this new hardware-level feature also comes with some very noticeable drawbacks. When you turn the privacy setting on, it reportedly ruins the overall display quality. It severely drops the screen brightness, messes with the contrast, and washes out the vibrant colors. Right now, it acts just like a standard screen protector you can buy online, but it is built directly into the phone itself.

However, despite underwhelming results from the brief test, Wylsacom did mention that it’s still a great feature and will be useful in certain scenarios. He also appreciated Samsung for working on this tech and wants other companies to adopt similar display tech on their smartphones.

This Wylsacom leak also lands right after the earlier hands-on leak from YouTuber Sahil Karoul, whose Galaxy S26 Ultra media on X was taken down following a copyright claim, while the longer YouTube content stayed up.

Meanwhile, a separate post asking if Galaxy S25 users will switch to the Galaxy S26 only because of the Privacy Display got multiple folks saying “no”. Though it’s not really a practical question to begin with. A majority of smartphone buyers do not upgrade their devices every year.

Still, it highlights that Samsung won’t be able to get away with its iterative upgrades for longer. Especially when the competition is this intense and players like Oppo, Vivo, and Huawei are offering cutting-edge hardware like bigger batteries and better cameras.

That said, Samsung could still tune how aggressive the Privacy Display is with updates. Either way, we will still have to wait and see how well it holds up once more people get retail units in hand and start trying the same side-seat “can you read this?” tests.

Featured image credit: Wylsacom / YouTube

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