Mobile World Congress (MWC) is notorious for showcasing wild, futuristic tech concepts that will likely never see the light of day. But this year in Barcelona, the top honour at the GLOMO Awards went to a device you can actually experience right now: the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.
Taking home the highly coveted ‘Best in Show’ award, Samsung didn’t win by just bumping up the camera megapixels or making the screen slightly brighter. According to the 200+ independent analysts and journalists on the GSMA judging panel, the S26 Ultra stood out amongst 3,000 exhibitors by addressing a fundamental modern anxiety: digital privacy.
Privacy Display
The standout feature that pushed the S26 Ultra ahead of the pack is its world-first built-in ‘Privacy Display’.
Until now, protecting your screen from wandering eyes on a busy commute or flight meant slapping a thick, third-party privacy screen protector over your phone—often ruining the screen’s brightness and touch sensitivity in the process. Samsung has engineered this directly into the display hardware. It provides a vibrant viewing experience for the user while obscuring the screen from peripheral angles.
Shaun Collins, Chair of the Judges for MWC Best in Show 2026, pinpointed this specific feature as the deciding factor. “Its privacy innovation addresses one of the most important needs of today’s digital lifestyle: security, personal space, and trust,” Collins noted.
‘Agentic’ AI
Beyond the hardware, a significant software leap was the second pillar of this win. The S26 Ultra ships with One UI 8.5, powered by a customised chipset designed explicitly to run faster, on-device AI.
Interestingly, Samsung is now classifying the S26 Ultra as an “agentic AI phone,” a term championed by Stephanie Choi, EVP and Head of Mobile Marketing. What does this actually mean for the user? Unlike older AI models that wait for a prompt to write an email or edit a photo, agentic AI has agency. It offers adaptive, context-aware intelligence that is proactive. It anticipates daily tasks, executing routines in the background while keeping data secure on the device.
Our Take
The MWC Best in Show award is often called the “gold standard” of the mobile digital landscape. By awarding it to the S26 Ultra, the industry is sending a clear message: meaningful innovation right now isn’t about foldable concepts with five hinges. It is about refining the daily user experience.
By combining proactive, agentic AI with hardcore privacy hardware, Samsung has created a device that genuinely feels like a leap, rather than just an iterative spec bump.
This privacy screen feature is a gimmick in my opinion. These companies have spent over a decade improving screen technology and viewing angles. Samsung, being a leading display-maker, was at the forefront of these efforts. Now they are reinventing ‘bad viewing angles’? Now the screen technology we had in 2015 is better? And that is the best feature that they have to offer in their new 200k phone? Every other feature is stagnant – no battery upgrades at all (they lie to you about new 60W charging which only means peak charging speed that will sustain for a minute and fall back down to 25W, while cheaper competing phones have game changing Silicon Carbon batteries charging at 120W), no camera upgrades at all (again they ride on people’s ignorance because they tell you that only one camera sensor out of their entire setup now has a wider aperture, but it’s the same sensor they’ve used for 3 generations, that’s something they could have done in previous phones but chose not to so they could bring it later as an incremental upgrade when they run out of excuses for not upgrading their phones), some consumers in forums are already complaining that screen quality is terrible even with the privacy feature turned off because they had go rearrange pixels in the screen, and new software is not a feature because it will obviously be available on all their phones from the last 4 years. This company has become an absolute joke. I really wish we had a better way of educating consumers that just because a company has paid its way to becoming the most popular doesn’t mean they are giving you the best products. We should stop buying based on which brand provides you with the most social acceptance or wanting to prove that you have enough money to buy into a particular ecosystem, but rather buy based on what gives you the best value for your money, and which companies are actually trying to be innovative. Supporting companies like Samsung means they’ll continue to put out slop because we show we are ignorant and are willing to buy anything just for the sake, and we will never get any true innovation as a consequence.