Hopefully You Pre-Ordered Your Galaxy S26 Ultra

The Galaxy S26 series is officially on sale as of today. For those who pre-ordered, you should have already received your device by now or will likely by the end of the day. I know many of the pre-orders were arriving early, as they often do. Here’s the thing – I sure hope you pre-ordered if you were interested, because the trade-in values on devices you own have been dropped severely and the Galaxy S26 deals from a day ago are beyond gone.

Samsung has clearly made a choice with the Galaxy S26 series to pull back heavily on promos of the past. With the Galaxy S26 Ultra launch, they offered almost no special deals for those who pre-ordered. We saw trade-in values at decent marks, but there were no free storage upgrades, no credits to spend on other goods, and no special bundle deals. It was a pretty rough launch from a consumer standpoint after so many years of insane Samsung deals.

Today, the Galaxy S26 Ultra, Galaxy S26+, and Galaxy S26 are all available with immediate delivery or at your local carrier and retailer. If you want one from Samsung, you can still do their instant trade-in program and get a discount off the price of a new S26 at checkout. However, we were seeing $900 off discounts depending on the device, but those have been reduced at the top end to just $720.

Making matters worse, Samsung hasn’t kicked off a fresh set of promotions to get people who didn’t pre-order to pre-order. They didn’t lower trade-ins while offering a double storage promo or a Galaxy Watch 8 as an add-on for cheap. Instead, it’s a smaller trade-in deal with a 15% off sale on the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro.

As for trade-in values, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy S25 Ultra are both fetching $720. From there, it gets ugly in a hurry. The next highest value is $490 for a Galaxy S24 Ultra, which was worth $800 yesterday. From there, you have $480 for the S25+ and then a mixture of devices at $400 or $300. This trade-in values suck.

Samsung claims that pre-orders for the S26 series were a major success. I have thoughts there.

Still want one? Get the best Galaxy S26 Ultra here.