Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus reappears in renders with a new camera island

Just two months ago, accepted wisdom was that there would be no Galaxy S26 Plus, Samsung’s mid-sized flagship canned in favor of a slim Edge phone. Now things have flipped, with the Edge supposedly cancelled and the Plus not only on track to release early next year, but revealed in new renders based on the phone’s leaked specs.

Our first potential look at the S26 Plus comes from leaker OnLeaks via Android Headlines, and for the most part it looks familiar enough. The biggest design change is to the camera island, though it won’t have the full-width camera rumored for the S26 Edge. Instead the leak shows a small island sitting directly below the three lenses, similar to designs we saw in September for the S26 Ultra and S26 Pro — another phone we don’t think is coming any more.

Samsung’s S26 line-up seems to have been in turmoil for some time. At one point leakers were in agreement that a reinvention was on the way, with the familiar Ultra model joined by an Edge and a smaller Pro. Now convention seems to have won out, with the Pro swapped for the regular S26, and the Edge for the Plus, and we don’t know if either of the dropped phones will ever see the light of day.

Android Headlines reports that the S26 Plus will be 7.35mm thick. That’s about as thick as the S25 Plus, and comfortably chunkier than the 5.8mm S25 Edge, so this doesn’t appear to be the second-gen thin phone with Plus model branding. The site separately reports that the regular S26 will be 7.24mm, a little thicker than leaks had pegged the Pro model, suggesting Samsung really is pulling away from the thin phone trend it itself started with the first Edge this year.

There is some hope for thin fans. Dutch fansite Galaxy Club reported last month that another Edge is still under development, codenamed “More Slim.” Perhaps that will echo the S25 Edge in launching a few months after the other models, or maybe this is the end of the road for the Edge. We might find out more when the S26 launch rolls around, likely in early 2026.