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If you pick up your Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, you’ll find two very small holes at the top of the frame. Both holes look identical, but they do very different things. One hole is a microphone, while the other one is an air vent. This feature isn’t exclusive to the Galaxy S26 series; it’s also currently found on other Samsung flagships, such as the S25 series. This wasn’t the case with some older models — the S23 series, for example, had one microphone hole at the top, but the second microphone hole and the air vent were at the bottom. Additionally, the S22 and S21 flagship phones also have two holes, but they were for the microphone only.
What’s confusing is that both holes are the exact same size, so it is easy to mix up which one is the microphone and which is the air vent. The hole closest to the right is the air vent, while the one to the left is usually the microphone. You can refer to the online Samsung user manual for your exact phone model to confirm. A well-fitting, durable phone case should not cover these holes; instead, it will have a space to accommodate them. If a case does go over these holes, you might run into problems. One is the microphone’s noise cancellation; it could be less effective, since you’re blocking a point where sound is detected for cancellation. As a result, your phone calls might sound more muffled to the other person.
Why are there multiple holes on a phone?
Samsung introduced the multi-hole concept as a way to implement noise-cancellation and provide water resistance. The microphone covers the former, while the air vent balances pressure to protect the watertight seal. Samsung does this by employing a Gore-Tex-like membrane behind the hole to keep water out. While you may think this is just to stop water from getting in, it is actually more about air permeability, since a lot of phones sometimes rely on passive cooling and don’t actually have a useful open-air vent design. Unlike regular Samsung phones, you’ll typically find dedicated thermal vents on gaming phones, like in the ROG series.
Your phone might also have a third, similarly sized hole at the bottom of the frame, opposite to the two holes at the top, which is also labeled as your microphone hole in the user manual. It’s also not unusual for a phone to have multiple holes for its microphones. The Google Pixel 9 Pro, which has three: One at the top, one between the two rear-facing cameras, and one tiny hole by the charging port. Part of the multiple microphone hole design is actually to improve noise cancellation. The bottom microphone hole focuses on capturing your voice, while the others capture ambient sounds that could interrupt your calls. The different sound waves are then subtracted using destructive wave interference to improve sound clarity, usually by built-in software (the A series has Voice Focus, for example).
