Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: More important than you think! – Review”.
When Samsung announced the Galaxy s23 Ultra, the response from The Tech Community was a little underwhelming and it’s not hard to see why, on the surface, the s23 ultra seems like a very incremental upgrade, but under the hood there’s actually a lot going on that may make The device worth investing in I’m Harley Morano with Android authority and in this article we’re going to be reviewing the Galaxy s23 Ultra and figure out whether or not you should buy Samsung’s latest flagship. Thank you at first glance, it looks like not much has really changed with the s23 ultra’s design. It takes most of its design. Cues from its predecessor, complete with its boxy note, inspired, build satin back texture, armor, aluminum frame and ip68 rated build individual cutouts for the rear cameras and a slot at the bottom of the phone that houses the S Pen. But while it may look similar to last year’s phone, the s23 ultra is actually a little bit more durable.
The front display now uses Gorilla Glass, victis 2 for improved protection against accidental drops. Also, the aluminum sides are thicker and flatter, which makes it easier to hold the device in your hands, thus preventing accidental touches these durability. Improvements were actually a lifesaver for me. In fact, when I was filming close-ups of the s23 ultra Outdoors, the wind actually knocked the phone onto the pavement display side down.
When I picked up the device. I thought there were some scuffs on the armor aluminum, but it turns out that the protective tape was actually just still on. I couldn’t find a single scratch on the display or the sides of the device, so thank you Samsung, so it’s safe to say that the s23 ultra will certainly survive a few accidental drops, although I’d still err on the side of caution and buy a case now. As good as the s23 ultra’s design may be, I do have one little gripe with it and it’s the fact that the S Pen only comes in one color. Now I actually don’t mind the color Choice here and the metal accent of the stylus actually matches the color of the armor aluminum on your s23 Ultra. However, I do wish that Samsung included a white stylus for certain colors, such as with the samsung.com exclusive color sky, blue. The single color choice for the stylus isn’t going to be a deal breaker for me, but it does make the design of the phone and the stylus seem a little less cohesive flipping to the front of the device.
The s23 ultra’s display is very similar to the s22 ultra. It features a 6.8 inch Dynamic AMOLED panel with curved edges and a 120 hertz variable refresh rate that can go down to 1 Hertz, which in theory could help save on battery life. This year, however, the s23 ultra features an outdoor Peak brightness of 1750 nits.
The brighter screen is very much appreciated when you’re viewing your phone in bright, sunlight. In fact, the high outdoor Peak brightness made it easy for me to shoot all of these Glamor Shots of the display, with proper exposure, even on a rare sunny day in San Francisco. Overall, the design and display of the s23 ultra isn’t groundbreaking, and that’s not a bad thing. Even if the changes between then and now are iterative.
What remains true is the fact that Samsung’s flagship phone still has one of the best designs and displays available for an Android device. What isn’t an iterative upgrade, however, is Samsung’s decision to finally include its 200 megapixel sensor for the s23 ultra’s main rear camera and, as you can see from the sample photos, the new sensor produces images with a great amount of detail and good code reproduction, the s23 Ultra does tend to oversaturate green and red tones slightly, but it’s not a bad thing. If anything, it adds a tasteful amount of Vibrance in the shots and it’s a far cry from the oversaturated look from Samsung’s older smartphone cameras. Now, while the main camera has certainly seen some upgrades, the rest of the rear camera system remains relatively unchanged from last year.
The ultrawide camera and the s23 ultra provides minimal Distortion even at 0.6 times zoom, and you can make out a good amount of detail, especially in the brick wall and tree branches of the sample photos. Meanwhile, the three times and 10 times telephoto cameras also perform very well in good lighting conditions. We did notice a bit of color shift between the different telephoto cameras, but again it’s nothing. You’Re really gon na notice this, unless you’re, really pixel peeping with the s23 ultra. You have the option for 30 times and 100 times zoom, while I personally wouldn’t have any use for the 100 times Zoom. I actually found the 30 times Zoom to be quite impressive when I was shooting footage of one of our editors see Scott Brown.
I had him point the phone at a placard that was across the street, from where we were standing to our surprise. We were able to get a good photo using the 30 time, zoom feature with a good amount of sharpness and we were actually able to read the far away text rounding off the other features of the rear camera system night mode shots look good for shooting in Low light and you get photos that are comparable to those taken with Google’s Nightside technology. However, on the s23 ultra night mode is only available on the Main and Ultra wide rear cameras, and unfortunately, this means that telephoto shots aren’t really going to look their best at night.
Image. Stabilization also performs really well on the s23 ultra, which is Handy especially when you’re going to take photos using the 30 times or 100 times. Zoom feature now on the flip inside the s23 ultra Now features a 12 megapixel selfie camera and while some people may see this as a downgrade from the 40 megapixel sensor from the s22 ultra’s front-facing camera, it actually isn’t remember the lower the megapixel count, the greater The amount of light capture, which means that the selfie camera on the s23 ultra can perform better in low light conditions and from our test samples. The selfie camera provides a good amount of detail in the shot in terms of video. The s23 ultra is capable of shooting up to 8K at 30 frames per second on its rear cameras and up to 4K at 60 frames per second on the selfie camera. The overall video quality from the cameras are good and you can even choose to shoot at lower resolutions if you want to use a higher frame rate. If you are, however, planning to regularly shoot 8K video then be sure to choose a device with a higher storage tier, because you’re going to run out of storage very fast old Galaxy s23 Ultras are powered exclusively by the Snapdragon hn2 processor.
That’S right! For the first time, in a long time, Samsung is doing away with exynos and only releasing one chip to rule all its s23 devices, and it’s not just some standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. Thanks to a partnership between Samsung and Qualcomm, the s23 ultra features an overclocked processor, making it the fastest device currently on the market that is equipped with qualcomm’s latest silicon. And when you take a look at our benchmarks, you can see that the s23 ultra performs very close to the iPhone 14 Pro in CPU performance and is the top dog. When looking at GPU benchmarks.
Now synthetic benchmarks are nice and all. But how does the s23 ultra actually perform during normal use? Unsurprisingly, performs very well one of our writers. Ryan Haynes has been using the s23 ultra as his daily driver and during his time with the device he didn’t experience any lag or stuttering, while gaming, emailing or streaming video content. Also, overheating isn’t an issue with the s23 ultra.
In fact, the worst it ever got was when the form warmed up just a little bit when playing processor intensive games such as asphalt 9. when it comes to battery the s23 ultra uses the same 5000 milliamp hour cell as its predecessor, and it does last quite A while our reviewer Ryan’s device usage was quite mixed, consisting of some gaming video streaming hours of music streaming to Bluetooth devices and a good dose of social media scrolling during his downtime. From his experience, Ryan was able to get around two days of use with between 6 and 8 hours of on screen time before he actually needed a charger. When it is time to charge.
The s23 ultra supports 45 watt wire charging using a compatible charger, which you will unfortunately have to buy separately. Using a cable you’ll be able to charge the s23 ultra from 0 to 100 in just under 60 minutes, which is a few minutes faster compared to the s22 ultra. Now, it’s not as fast as OnePlus is 150 watt or xiaomi’s 210 watt wire charging. But it’s definitely faster than charging a phone like the Google pixel 7 Pro with speeds that top out at 23 Watts if you’re, not in a rush. You can also take advantage of the s23 ultra’s 15 watt wireless charging. However, this could take between 90 to 100 minutes to fully charge the device and in order to actually reach Peak wireless charging speeds you’re gon na need to Shell out around 60 US dollars for Samsung’s cooled wireless chargers in terms of software, the Samsung Galaxy s23.
Ultra comes with Android 13 out of the box and features one UI 5.1. Now there aren’t really any major changes compared to one UI 5.0. However, there have been some updates to certain apps. For example, the camera app Now features expert raw settings in the advanced menu. This means that you won’t have to jump into a dedicated app just to be able to control settings like ISO and aperture or even toggle through the different shooting modes for the 200 megapixel main sensor with one UI 5.1 you’ll also be able to set different wallpapers For the home and lock screen depending on your current activity, setup is also much easier thanks to a QR code that appears when you’re first configuring your device and will help you log into your Wi-Fi network. Samsung account and Google account automatically.
There are also a series of new widgets, including a new battery widget for all your devices and a new weather widget that tweaks its illustration style, based on current weather conditions. The cherry on top Samsung maintains its reputation for having one of the best update commitments in the Android market. The s23 ultra comes with up to four years of guaranteed OS updates and up to five years of security patches. The Samsung Galaxy s23 Ultra starts at 1199.
Us Dollars and comes with 8 gigabytes of memory and 256 gigabytes of storage, and if you want more memory and storage, then be prepared to Shell out even more cash, so is the s23 ultra worth its premium price tag? Well, yes, and no, let me explain the s23 ultra is undoubtedly a well-built phone, it’s arguably one of the best and one of the more high-end Android devices currently available, but most importantly, the s23 ultra is a very reliable phone and therefore a very reliable investment for The long run it features a very durable and drop resistant, build a processor that provides way more than enough power for daily tasks and an excellent camera system that can always be improved via future software updates. However, if you are coming from an S21 Ultra or older, or if you’re looking to invest in a top tier Flagship smartphone, then it’s important that the device you’re buying is reliable, has the right hardware and the right software to help it last. Fortunately, the s23 ultra is the complete package, but what do you think of the s23 ultra? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Are you planning on buying it? Let us know in the comments down below while you’re down there be sure to like subscribe and hit the Bell icon to be notified of when we upload next, I’m Harley Moreno’s Android authority, and I will see you in the next one foreign .