2026 Ultra flagship Android phone comparison: OPPO, Samsung, Vivo, and Xiaomi reviewed

(Subjective) camera comparison

While we haven’t done a side-by-side camera shootout, we do have some photography tours with these devices that help to showcase the strengths and shortfalls of each Ultra mobile:

These, together with the Vivo X300 Ultra review, makes it clear that producing great photos is mostly a non-issue for their top-tier devices. Choosing a favourite comes down to personal preference, like the onslaught of optional teleconverter kits that Chinese Android phones are happy to offer (at an extra cost).

Of particular note, these are some ways each phone brand tries to go the next mile in imaging prowess:

• OPPO: While it prides itself on accuracy, there’s also plenty of computational photography chops included to make it a versatile shooter for portraits and street photography, letting you get very natural-looking results. Has an optional teleconverter kit if you want to shoot far.
• Samsung: Generally, the all-rounded choice for casual shooters, but it comes with a wealth of expert-level first-party apps hidden away in its own app store, the Galaxy store. It’s still very capable at most optical zoom ranges, with greater emphasis on night-time photography (Nightography).
• Vivo: Also known for its accuracy, while relying on its partnered lenses to convince you it’s the best choice for minimal interference in your images. Also has aggressive computational photography tuning to deliver on photos with bokeh (the focusing blur effect achieved at lower apertures). Also has optical zoom extension through optional teleconverter kits.
• Xiaomi: While it has large sensors for more data capture, its crowning achievement is its use of both the colour and lens tuning seen in proper Leica cameras, which appeal to a crowd that loves dramatised contrast handling, though it’s nowhere near what the real eye sees. Can also support ND filters if you are willing to get a special phone case for them.

Our pick: It’s a toss-up between OPPO Find X9 Ultra and Vivo X300 Ultra, owing to their zoom versatility, general consistency across different rear cameras (even ultrawide), and that’s even before we factor in our personal preferences like coloursiation, detail, noise management, and artificial bokeh mastery through computational photography.

Xiaomi’s choice of Leica colourisation can feel restrictive for users, and Samsung lacks optional kits or the added counsel from time-honoured optics brands to help maximise its cameras’ performance. That said, the latter makes up for it with amazing, free-of-charge first-party add-ons that you can only find in the Galaxy Store for apps.

Software and user experience comparison

Generally speaking, Android phones have to work with whatever Google provides to the Android ecosystem, and each brand ends up with its own take on extra features. The current state of Android offers more powerful customisation options than a decade ago, and phone brands are working to integrate them into their layouts and platforms.

Among them would be the inclusion of Apple AirDrop compatibility for Google’s Quick Share, which means your Android phone can share amazing photos and videos (see above) to your Apple-loving friends, a taste of good computational photography and social media-ready content at a moment’s notice.

Phones are also increasingly the main gateway to many digital-adjacent aspects of a connected life. Beyond security and privacy, the operating system also needs to play nicely with a smart appliance ecosystem, while maintaining a phone layout that doesn’t frustrate users and controls that are easy to find and tweak. Long gone are the days when pretty icons, bars, and minimal bloatware or ads were enough for a phone to stand tall among the rest.

Our pick: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra’s One UI is at the frontier of Ultra-type phones. Not only is it easy to use with smart appliances (like the rest), but its interface has also gotten cleverer over the years.

An understated perk of One UI is Samsung Knox, which provides on-board, hardware-based protection for both security and privacy needs. That said, it’s still contingent on users not giving away sensitive data willy-nilly, and even Samsung has provided for that with Auto Blocker, among other tools.

Another up-and-coming faucet that informs the user experience is mobile AI. How brands choose to balance generative, agentic, and machine-learnt AI in the right places affects the final user experience.

As phone reviewers, we tend to get frustrated when we encounter AI features that don’t work as advertised or are forced upon users with no real benefit. The disappointment compounds when AI is paraded about as if the attempts matter more than the outcomes. In our experience, most mobile AI tools that are truly appreciated are rarely in-your-face, too.

In that regard, we find One UI’s Galaxy AI quickly becoming a star pick. What first started out as co-opting Gemini tools into Samsung-branded features has slowly grown into a true background warrior. Galaxy AI-powered Call Screening is a great example as how AI can actually help you achieve more with less in a daily setting, and Galaxy AI also plays nicely with other AI tools of your choice, such as Perplexity.

Also, OPPO’s ColorOS (with OPPO AI) gets a special mention for being quite clever at picking out practical outcomes for users. Our favourite example is AI Bill Manager, which can drastically cut down the work needed to file paper receipts into digital claims for your workplace, all from your phone. This brand, along with Samsung, also actively tries to integrate AI features into their cheaper midrange handsets, and that bodes well for seeing how AI is used to uplift underserved or underresourced parts of our SEA community.

All of these can change quite quickly, since mobile AI is largely at the mercy of its development, and current sentiments around AI aren’t exactly sterling, given that the technology itself faces ethical hurdles while also becoming a scapegoat for other social ills.

Battery life comparison

The numbers are the result of multiple benchmarking attempts. They are also recorded in our reviews. Below is another table if you prefer reading it this way:

We generally don’t take milliamp-hour (mAh) capacity numbers at face value, and newer chemical blends don’t always translate to longer uptime. Despite all four Ultra-class phones having mostly the same chipset model from the same manufacturer, other factors like software optimisation, display brightness, usage intensity, app type and coding efficiency, the time spent on a phone, and even mobile/Wi-Fi network health can greatly affect how much time you get out of them before the “low battery” warning pops up.

Our pick: Based on our standardised battery-life testing and repeated attempts across all models, the OPPO Find X9 Ultra is our pick. That’s just splitting hairs, since every model here can achieve at least 17 hours of uptime (and we stop our tests at 20% remaining capacity). The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is also a viable pick seeing that it lasted over 20 hours.

HWZ Editorial’s review scoring comparison

Since the HWZ Editorial team has reviewed all four Ultra flagship-class phones previously, we’ve also given them detailed and overall scores based on how they generally perform during our time with the devices.

Our pick: It’s quite obvious that we’d lean towards phones that already received our Editors’ Choice award. For now, that’s the OPPO Find X9 Ultra. To get an in-depth perspective, be sure to read all our Ultra-grade Android phone reviews (or their Pros and Cons if you’re short on time):

Conclusion

To sum it up, each premium flagship-class phone has unique and compelling reasons to stand out from the rest. While they are collectively the best devices offered by their respective brands, no two phones share identical selling points. The resulting experience can differ greatly, even before factoring in your personal preferences and priorities. Someone who wants Leica camera colours in an affordable package would be hard-pressed to look past Xiaomi, and another who values robust use with security features might only have eyes for a Samsung.

We hope you have a favourite. Be sure to find out more, or share your thoughts in our forum’s Mobile Communication sub-section to find other like-minded users.

To read the full reviews of the phones, click the links below.