Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Galaxy S23 / Ultra Impressions: Cruise Control!”.
Foreign, so we do have some new Samsung phones for early in the year, as we usually expect them this time. It’S s23, s23 plus and s23 Ultra spoiler alert I’ve played with them for like two hours. They are very similar to last year’s phones, which is great. Those were Rock Solid, but that also means that I can probably make this like the shortest MKBHD video of the past year. So I’m going to try let’s get through it, okay, so the lineup is s23 s23 plus and s23 Ultra. But there are the same four colors across the entire lineup, so Phantom black, green, lavender and cream all pretty tame. Looking, I think, and as expected, the s23 and s23 plus are basically identical other than their size, which means you can either get the smaller one.
With the 6.1 inch 1080p OLED and a 3900 milliamp hour battery or the bigger one, with the 6.6 inch 1080p OLED and a 4700 milliamp hour battery, also the bigger one apparently has slightly faster wired charging 45 Watts Peak versus 25 and a higher base storage. There’S 128 on the small one but 256 gigs starting on the plus. That’S it so aside from that you’re looking at the same general shape and design as last year flat display, you know the ports and the speakers at the bottom.
The button locations look basically the same still got. Wireless charging still got IP ratings. Really.
The only thing that’s updated here from the s22s are the chip and the cameras. So the new chips are the Snapdragon 8 gen 2. and if you pay attention to the presentation, Samsung’s doing this thing, where they’re calling it like Snapdragon, 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy as if it’s sort of a customized ship.
But when I asked Samsung about this, it seems like basically they’re doing a slightly higher Max clock speed. Maybe it’s just binning for all we know, so I don’t expect it to be a dramatic difference versus other phones that just have Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. But you know that’s something we’ll test we’ll see in the full review, but I mean you know the phones feel fast and Samsung phones always feel this fast when they’re brand new. So I’m not super worried, but the other new thing that I mentioned is the cameras. So these new camera systems are refreshed across the board: new sensors, New Image, processing, new AI remastering of photos. So it’s a 50 megapixel main camera paired with a 12 megapixel Ultra wide and a 3X telephoto playing with it briefly, you know the images I took. I thought actually looked really good. It’S obviously a super brightly lit setup room, so I will say they also look very hdre and, dare I say, a bit pixely in this situation, but that tracks with Samsung’s claims of a much better improved dynamic range. I’M just very curious to get these out into the real world and see how it Stacks up so definitely get subscribed to see the review when that comes out, and I can actually test them.
One thing I saw that I didn’t like, though, was the presence of a bit of shutter lag. This isn’t exactly new with some Samsung phones, but sometimes you take a photo of something fast moving and you think you got it, but then it turns out. The image was captured slightly later than when your finger hit the shutter so something to keep an eye on just because if I notice it in this perfect lighting, it’s probably going to strike again, but but there is also a new selfie Camera 12 megapixels. Just a lot of new Imaging stuff here, so that’s that’s mainly what’s new, with this incremental s23 update, so s23 starts at 7.99 and s23 plus starts at 9.99, if you’re really trying to pay 200 more dollars for the bigger phone, but there’s also the 1199 s23 Ultra again, a pretty similar design to last year, but, as you may have noticed, there’s really two noticeable changes for those of us who have touched and held last year’s phone one.
The camera bumps are all just a little bit bigger with these new pronounced rings around them. I’Ll talk about the new cameras in a second, but then two when you’re holding it in the hand they’ve changed the shape of the sides to be much more flat. So the whole phone is just much more boxy and I like it, I really like it. Samsung says this was a reshaped curve at the edges to better optimize for the S Pen that is still here. I assume this would mean either they’re making room for a slightly bigger battery, or maybe they can compress the dimensions and make a slightly smaller phone. But the battery size is still the huge 5000 milliamp hours from last year and the phone is still huge. So I mean it feels like it’s mostly for Aesthetics and feel in the hand and just have something different from last year, but I do I actually really like it.
I also did notice. Interestingly, some of these phones – I was recording with, were flickering more than usual, but just on camera like I’m, not aware of any big differences in the Adaptive refresh rates, these are still ltpo displays that go from one to 120 hertz and I played with a few Settings when I noticed it flickering, but I couldn’t really figure it out, not that it’s a big deal. It didn’t flicker to my eyes – and these are great, looking screens with a new Peak brightness of 1750 nits across the board, which is excellent, but that’s just something different that I noticed to keep my eye on.
Really, though, the cameras are the biggest thing in the ultra refresh as well again, new sensors across the board, headlined by a 200 megapixel main camera, there’s also the 12 megapixel Ultra wide and a pair pair of telephoto cameras 3x and the 10x there’s going to be A bunch of new camera stuff to test in here from the improved Optical image, stabilization across the board to the better low light performance, maybe with 16 pixels binning into one and kicking out a 12 megapixel photo to the Galaxy camera feature integration in certain apps, like Instagram and also the 200 megapixel mode, I want to see how good the actual 200 megapixel files really are, not that I print out photos and set them on canvas or anything, but you could, if you wanted to, but I think it’s clear. The bottom line is the camera system is one of the biggest differentiators between the ultra and the rest of the lineup. Aside from that, it’s going to be a pretty familiar phone to the one that I gave the best big smartphone award last year. It’S still a 6.8 inch edge to edge 1440p OLED display, there’s still the you know: Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy.
You can get up to a terabyte of storage, still the IP rating we already know there will be no Chargers in any of the boxes. So this video sponsor anchor is Ace. Charger is definitely the move here. This 313 charger is way smaller than Samsung’s official one thanks to gallium nitride AKA Gan technology, plus it folds up, but it’ll still guarantee the 45 watts of peak charging power that the ultra supports. With super fast charging 2.0, so it fully charges in about an hour, and it does it safely with things like current regulation over temperature protection and more or there’s there a 312 charger which is a good pair to match. With a 25 watt Peak charging of the s23 and still smaller and more efficient than Samsung’s, so if you’re looking for a powerful charger for s23, s23 Plus or s23 Ultra, this Anker Ace charger is the move and I’m going to link it below.
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