- Samsung may now stick to its usual S series naming scheme
- We’ve also heard the S26 Edge may not get a launch
- The phones could appear later than normal, sometime in March
It would seem the Galaxy S26 development process isn’t going quite as smoothly as Samsung would hope: earlier this week we heard the Galaxy S26 Edge may have been cancelled, and now there are new rumors around launch delays and phone rebrandings.
First up, the rebranding. Several previous leaks had suggested that the base model in this series would be called the Galaxy S26 Pro – perhaps to add to the appeal of the phone, and match Apple‘s iPhone series – but now it seems that’s no longer happening.
According to sources speaking to SamMobile, the entry-level handset will actually just be called the Samsung Galaxy S26 after all, following the Samsung Galaxy S25. If the Edge variant gets ditched too, then we’ll get the usual standard, Plus, and Ultra models.
We did have our doubts about how clever it would have been for Samsung to give a base model phone the Pro moniker – albeit the base model in a relatively powerful flagship series – and now the handset won’t be directly compared to the iPhone 17 Pro, which is likely to have happened otherwise.
A longer wait
The second rumor is around a launch window. According to TechManiacs (via GSMArena), all this kerfuffle around naming, and perhaps stopping production of the Galaxy S26 Edge, means the devices aren’t going to see the light of day until March.
You have to go back a couple of years to the Samsung Galaxy S23 to find the latest time these S series phones weren’t launched in January – and even then, they made their debut at the very start of February.
Samsung won’t be happy about having to delay its 2026 schedule, but if the phones aren’t ready, there’s not much that can be done. In a change from the Galaxy S25 range, at least some of the Galaxy S26 models are expected to come with Exynos chipsets inside.
TechManiacs has a bit of a hit and miss record with leaks, but it’s certainly plausible that the S26 handsets will be delayed, given the rumors so far. Interestingly, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is said to be on schedule for January, so may actually show up earlier than the others in the series.
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