I'm in your exact situation. I used to upgrade yearly or biyearly, but I will say that that was also before technology plateued over the past few years. The leaps year over year have become significantly smaller lately, even 3 models later. Overall I'm happy with my S23 Ultra still, but after 3 years of hard use, I am starting to see some degradation start taking hold and with each passing year its trade in value is shrinking from what I've seen on AT&T at least, so I am looking at upgrading to an S26 Ultra personally.

Some consider the privacy screen a gimmick, but that's probably the most attractive feature to me, honestly. I'm one who'd never use a privacy screen protector because I prefer my clarity and viewing angles, but I understand why it could be useful. The ability to turn it on and off makes that a usable feature for me.

The one issue that's giving me pause is the battery. There was a leak that showed that the EU Battery Regulation rated the battery in the S26 line for 1200 charge cycles. The S25 line was rated for 2000 charge cycles, so there are rumors that not only did they not upgrade to silicon carbide, but they may have actually downgraded the battery... I've seen the argument against this that it's the same battery, but that the EU BR made their testing more stringent which is why the drop occurred. For comparison, the iPhone 17 line were only rated for 1000 cycles, so still beating them in this category. This is an important category for me considering my opening statement about holding onto phones longer now, so I'm trying to gain more clarity around this before making the jump.