Samsung has just announced its Galaxy S26 phones, which will be its flagship smartphones for 2026. At an Unpacked event in San Francisco, the Korean tech giant showed off three new devices: the Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26 Plus and Galaxy S26 Ultra.

If you aren’t an iPhone person and are looking for an Android upgrade this year, one of these three phones could well be on your shortlist as you shop around.

But Samsung has priced its new phones higher than the Galaxy S25 range that debuted in 2025, with the cheapest Galaxy S26 retailing for £879 – that’s an £80 price hike on the cheapest Galaxy S25.

Samsung will point out that for this higher price you get 256GB storage compared to last year’s standard 128GB, but that £879 price tag is noticeably £80 more than the £799 iPhone 17 and £799 Google Pixel 10.

And as we are all watching the pursestrings, there is an argument to be had you can get all the phone you need for £499 with the new Google Pixel 10a.

But if you have your heart set on the Galaxy S26 and are disappointed to hear it’s more expensive than ever, then my advice to you is to have a little patience and simply wait for a couple of months. Historically, Samsung phones drop in price relatively quickly after their launch – and right now is probably the worst possible time to buy a Galaxy S26.

That’s even considering Samsung’s pre-order offer, which starts today, February 25 and runs until the new phones are due to ship and go on full sale on March 11. You can get double the storage at no extra cost – so you can spend £879, the RRP of the 256GB Galaxy S26, but get the 512GB Galaxy S26.

On the face of it, that’s a good offer. 512GB will not fill up in a hurry, and is a somewhat sensible investment if you want to keep this phone for the full seven years Samsung says it will keep the software updated for.

But I think most people should wait. £879 is a lot of money to pay upfront for a new smartphone, and looking at the price history of the year-old Galaxy S25 suggests you could wait and get the S26 cheaper as soon as May.

Camelcamelcamel tracks Amazon prices, and the S25 is shown as starting out at its £799 RRP in February 2025 before dropping to £699 in early May. It then dropped again to about £650 in July, and fell to its lowest listed price of £599 in November for Black Friday.

You might not want to wait till November, but you might save £100 by May if history repeats itself. If you don’t mind a 256GB device, I suggest holding out for this new Samsung phone’s inevitable price drop.

The other way of looking at it is asking yourself if you really need this year’s phone. Sure, Samsung has doubled the base storage, but the Galaxy S26’s camera specs are practically identical to the Galaxy S22 from 2022, and on paper last year’s Galaxy S25 is all but identical in specs.

Right now, you can get the 256GB Galaxy S25 from AO for £649. To my mind, that’s a handy way to save £230 and get a solid phone that is much the same as the S26 announced today, with the same amount of storage.

But if you really must have the latest Galaxy, I think it’s clear that you should wait if you don’t want to spend top dollar.