Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Galaxy S22 Ultra Impressions: It’s a Note!”.
Hey what’s up mkbhd here, and this is the all new samsung galaxy s22 ultra freshly announced today, and i got some hands-on time with this new flagship and you know what’s funny, we haven’t had a new samsung galaxy note in two years, since the note 20 in 2020 and so since then, we’ve had all these questions like oh, is samsung killing the galaxy note: are they done with that line? Is it over, but i have a theory. This is a galaxy note now, obviously not by name we’re still calling this an s22 ultra. But clearly you know, samsung was looking for a little bit more of a way to differentiate the ultra from the rest of the galaxy s lineup and a reason to justify this 1200 starting price. So, honestly, i wouldn’t really be surprised if samsung did behind the scenes. Actually make an s22 ultra and a note 22 ultra, and then look at them side by side and like yeah, there’s not really enough differentiating these here and then just booted the s22 ultra and kept the note 22 ultra and slotted it in at the top of The lineup but change the name, so yes, the phone, i’m about to show you is called the galaxy s22 ultra, but uh yeah. The note is back so i picked this phone up and held it for the first time and immediately all the memories of previous galaxy notes come back now, like i said this slots in right above the galaxy s22 and s22 plus. I also have a video about those two new phones dropping at the same time as this one, so if you’re interested in those definitely check that out link below the like button but yeah, this is the top of that lineup.
So the new design that was rumored is real, the materials feel familiar, you’ve got metal and gorilla glass, victus plus, you know the flat top and bottom. The whole thing is ip68 certified and then the shape. Well, this is the exact specific shape of the galaxy notes of the past, just with a satin back now and the new camera layout, the satin back, i love seems like the word ultra is associated with like a satin or matte non-glossy back, and i’m all about That and of course, low key, while i of course love the matte black.
I think the white one here will show the fewest fingerprints, if you can keep it clean, but the cameras are the weird looking part for sure there is no big camera bump no shelf on the corner, like the s21 ultra just individual camera rings that each protrude Out the same amount from that flat back and the camera rings are shiny and actually match the rails of the phone for each color. But look i don’t think it looks that great. It looked pretty basic to me in the renders and it still does.
But honestly most other phones, camera bumps, look pretty lame too. Maybe this one looks a little dumber with a case on it because you have to draw around the camera cutouts and then it looks like the letter p shape. Kinda meh, i don’t know it’s a good thing.
You don’t have to look at the back of your phone all the time you can get a case you like, or something like that. It’S just a bummer, because the s21 series all looked so much better and the s22 and s22 plus both still have this better looking corner camera bump design. Anyway, the display up front on the ultra appears to be everything.
You’D expect. I think we kind of take it for granted a little bit at this point because they are consistently some of the absolute best displays on any phone seems like that’s again. What we’re looking at here, 6.8 inches corner to corner 1440p resolution 120 hertz max refresh rate – and this is an ltpo2 display now, so the refresh rate can modulate all the way down to one hertz when not much is happening for an even better mix of efficiency And responsiveness also, i was able to turn on adaptive refresh rate mode and 1440p resolution at the same time. So that’s good! You know we know: it’ll kill your battery, but hey you pay for a lot of those pixels, so you might as well be able to use them all, but yeah. This appears to be the world-class display. We expect again the selfie camera cutout is still top center.
Not taking too many risks by putting it underneath the display and the ultrasonic fingerprint reader is still in the same spot, same size and you’ve got that little curve on each side of the screen. The smaller s22s are completely flat, and i prefer that this one curves over the edges a little bit into the side rails. Just like the other notes, you can see the little ultra wide band cut out on the rail under the power and volume buttons and then, of course, the biggest new feature of the s22 ultra is a feature that came from the old notes, which is the built-in Stylus the s pen, like i said it’s a note, so the beloved built-in stylus returns to the bottom corner of the phone pops in and out reversibly. It has all the software, the screen off, notes the super low latency, everything that people loved about the s pen before it’s all still here, and it’s also funny this year, the s pens are all black, no matter what color phone you get, but just the cap Of the pen will match the color of the rails, which also matches the color of the camera rings. It really feels like this phone just picks up right, where the old notes left off, because other than the name basically does exactly that. Also, you might have noticed.
I haven’t even gotten to the specs yet but they’re exactly what you’d expect as a spec bump from those older notes: snapdragon 8 gen 1 chip and it’s gon na have the exynos versions in certain regions again, but it’s a new four nanometer chip and then every Spec other than the baseline version has 12 gigs of ram, so it’ll start at eight, but then every single other one up to one terabyte of storage will have 12 gigs of ram. So you can spec it up to that. High sounds expensive, but you can go that high if you want to the battery stays at the 5 000 milliamp hours, which is impressive.
Given there is now a cutout inside for the s pen and there’s 45 watt fast charging in the ultra and the s22 plus. But not in the regular, no charger in the box, but it’ll support that fast charging. If you give it enough juice, that’s like 50 charge added in 20 minutes of being plugged in and these cameras are interesting.
They’Re, not bumped up so much in the hardware department. But there sure are a lot of new software features, so you’re still looking at quad cameras, the 108 megapixel main camera, the ultra wide, a 3x telephoto and a 10x telephoto. But then in the software there’s a bunch of stuff there’s a new nona binning mode for high resolution. Nighttime photography it’ll combine the brightness of binned photos with the detail of the 108 megapixel mode, there’s an improved pro mode with new raw formats, they’re doing ai stereo depth, mapping for better portrait mode photos and also just playing around with the extremely limited time i had With hands-on, it feels like the 100x space.
Zoom has even more improved stabilization that tries to kind of lock onto subjects, presumably something contrast-based from what i can tell there’s a lot of stuff. I got to test on here, especially in the camera department, to see if it’s actually better or more improved than last year, but that should all be in the full review so for sure make sure you get subscribed to be among the first to see that full Review when it does come out but yeah, i think we’re pretty much all on the same page, i am very pumped to test long term, the note 20 or s22 ultra and all of its new features. Let me know in the comment section below what you want to know about. I mean there’s a bunch of interesting stuff. The battery, of course, is still huge.
Maybe it’s one ui 4.1. Maybe it’s the new camera features. Maybe it’s the style of stuff. Let me know i’ll be hanging out down there to figure it out, and the full review will be coming up soon. Until then make sure you check out the s22 and s22 plus video, if you’re interested in those as well, and that’s basically it thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace .