Samsung doesn't care about the Galaxy S27, and the leaked renders prove it

Samsung just completed its Galaxy S26 lineup with the launch of the Galaxy S26 FE, and rumors about its next-generation flagships, the Galaxy S27 series, are already circulating.

We recently got our first look at the Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra, which revealed that Samsung could be moving away from its familiar vertical camera layout and instead adopt an iPhone-like horizontal camera plateau. And now, leaks surrounding the base Galaxy S27 have started to surface as well.

The good news is that the base Galaxy S27 isn’t expected to follow the Ultra’s iPhone-inspired route. The bad news, and perhaps even more disappointingly, is that Samsung appears to be sticking with essentially the same design we’ve seen on its base Galaxy S phones for years.

Leaked Galaxy S27 renders are nothing but a disappointment

Following the Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra leak, we’ve now got our first look at what is claimed to be the regular Galaxy S27. The leak comes courtesy of OnLeaks, which means the leaks themselves are fairly reliable. And if you were hoping Samsung had something exciting planned for its smaller flagship this year, sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The leaked Galaxy S27 renders show a phone that looks barely any different from the Galaxy S26. You’re essentially getting the same familiar flat display, rounded corners, and even the same raised camera island on the back. In fact, even the dimensions are reportedly staying largely the same, give or take half a millimeter here and there.

Simply put, this is utterly disappointing.

I wasn’t expecting Samsung to completely redesign the base Galaxy S27 this year. Samsung tends to introduce major changes to the Ultra first, then trickle them down to its cheaper models. But getting what looks like essentially the same phone again, presumably with a newer chipset and a few internal upgrades, just feels wrong.

Samsung could have at least brought some of the previous Ultra’s design changes to the base Galaxy S27. Instead, it has chosen to leave the design almost untouched.

It seems Samsung has forgotten the base variant

It’s not like Samsung is ignoring its base flagship for the first time. The company has been doing this for the past few generations, but there has to be a point where the company simply can’t keep getting away with it.

Just look at the last few generations of base Galaxy S phones, and you’ll understand what I mean. With the release of the Galaxy S23 in February 2023, Samsung dropped the Galaxy S22’s contour cut camera design and switched to three individual camera rings.

Samsung then kept pretty much the same design for the Galaxy S24. With the Galaxy S25, the camera rings were slightly larger, but again, the overall phone looked the same. Then came the Galaxy S26 with a slightly raised camera island around the same three cameras, but with a similar design language.

And now the Galaxy S27 is apparently going to look like the Galaxy S26. That’s five generations of phones where Samsung has basically changed the camera rings, added an island, and called it a day.

Meanwhile, look at what Samsung has been doing with the Ultra.

That’s where you get all the new innovative features. It first got a 200MP main camera sensor (S23 Ultra), an anti-reflective display (S24 Ultra), the Privacy Display (S26 Ultra), and now — if the leaks are true — a completely redesigned Galaxy S27 Ultra. It’s not like Samsung can’t do something different. It just doesn’t seem to want to do it with the base Galaxy S model.

Sure, Samsung “upgrades” the phone every year. You get a newer chipset, a little more RAM here, a battery upgrade there, maybe a different camera sensor or more storage. But put the last four or five base Galaxy S phones side by side, and even someone like me, who follows smartphones closely, would probably need a minute to figure out which one is which.

And, not to forget, this is Samsung we’re talking about. Not some small Android brand that doesn’t have the resources to redesign its phones. This is one of the biggest smartphone manufacturers on the planet.

As much as I hate the leaked S27 renders, it’s clearly working for Samsung

The frustrating thing here is that, as much as I can rant about Samsung keeping the base Galaxy S27 almost identical to its predecessor, I can’t really argue with the business logic behind it. Samsung has very little incentive to make the base Galaxy S27 dramatically more exciting if buyers are already willing to spend more on the Ultra.

A recent report showed just how well the Galaxy S26 Ultra has been selling. It recently became the first Android flagship in around a decade to break into the top five best-selling smartphones globally during a quarter. And that, I think, explains a couple of things.

For one, people are clearly willing to spend more on an Ultra if Samsung gives them enough reasons. Features like Privacy Display, the anti-reflective screen, and 200MP camera are still exclusive to the Ultra model.

At the same time, the regular Galaxy S has become so iterative that spending a little more on the Ultra starts making more sense. If you’re already paying flagship money, do you buy the phone that looks almost identical to the previous few generations, or spend a few hundred dollars more on the one Samsung actually seems excited about?

And I think that could also explain why Samsung is supposedly keeping the Galaxy S27 Ultra’s redesign exclusive to the Ultra.

Think about it. If Samsung gave the entire Galaxy S27 lineup the same fresh design, you could buy the cheaper model and still get the new look. Instead, if these leaks are accurate, you’ll have a familiar-looking Galaxy S27 sitting next to a completely redesigned Galaxy S27 Ultra. The Ultra won’t just have better specs and features; it’ll actually look like the newer phone too.

We’ve seen Apple use a similar strategy with the iPhone, giving its Pro models distinctive hardware and design features. And Samsung seems to be following a similar playbook here.

Look, I’m no one to tell Samsung what it should or shouldn’t sell. And we’re still months away from the Galaxy S27 launch, so these early renders obviously don’t tell us everything about the phone. But based purely on what we’ve seen so far, the base Galaxy S27 is already starting to feel like an afterthought. And even if it makes sense, I still don’t love it.