"Increased durability and better heat dissipation": Samsung's mobile boss on major Galaxy S26 design change

The Samsung Galaxy S26 series has finally been revealed in full – and I was at Galaxy Unpacked to catch the show live, before receiving an S26 Ultra to review.

However, it was access to some Samsung top-tier executives in behind-closed-doors round-table formats that provided the opportunity to get some big questions answered.

One of which was: "why has the Galaxy S26 opted for Armor Aluminium 2 instead of the Titanium build of its S26 predecessor?"

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Samsung's Executive Vice President and Head of Smartphone Research and Development, Sunghoon Moon, was on hand to provide a summary.

Pressed as to why aluminium was the choice, when it's not technically as robust as titanium, Moon answered that "aluminium is lighter and more elastic – so tends to bend, which [would] also give less stress to components inside.

"Titanium versus aluminium each have their own set of pros and cons – and each year we [Samsung Mobile] weigh them up.

"This year we chose aluminium as it would increase the durability and offers better heat dissipation that fits with our design this time".

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Moon was referring to the Galaxy S26 Ultra's redesigned new vapour chamber, created in tandem with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 'for Galaxy' chipset in mind, to redirect heat and increase longevity of use.

Part of that comes down to battery, too, of course, so the inevitable question as to why there's no larger capacity cell or silicon-carbon solution for this generation was also raised – something I've previously asked in mid-2025.

Moon's answer here remains the same: that Samsung has to rigorously test its products and only when all parameters are met will it implement such a solution.

"We are also getting it ready [referring to silicon-carbon]. Once we believe it will improve customer experience, we will look into implementing that too.

"We have to think about a complex set of factors ... the battery capacity has to be maintained to at least 5000mAh [speaking on the Ultra model, specifically]."

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is a particularly interesting product for other reasons, of course, with Privacy Display a major component of its feature-set.

I'm currently reviewing the handset for an early March publish date, where I'll dig deeper into that technology's pros and cons – among investigating build, battery and all the other key factors about what already looks to be one of the best phones 2026.