Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: This Phone Is A LOT”.
This is the Galaxy s23 Ultra, the most expensive new phone in Samsung’s, Galaxy s23 lineup it launches on February 17th and starts at twelve hundred dollars. I’Ve been using this phone for a few days, and the biggest thing I can say about it so far is that it’s a lot in just about every single way, from the new 200 megapixel camera to the giant screen and, of course, that high price. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because this phone is supposed to be a lot. That’S why it’s called the ultra it’s for people who want something: that’s a bit more than what the average smartphone can provide.
I’Ve been using this for a few days and there’s a few things that jumped out to me so far that I’ve liked and disliked. First of all, I’ve been really impressed with the new camera. It’S not a huge leap over the s22 ultra, but you can definitely tell the difference when you’re looking at photos side by side. I also noticed that the performance is a bit faster than the s22 ultra now that it has that new Qualcomm, Snapdragon, 8 Gen 2 processor and then the battery life also seems promising so far and also don’t forget, you get four generations of Android OS updates with This phone, so it shouldn’t feel out of date anytime soon. Now, on the flip side, I was really hoping to see faster charging from this device.
You still only get 45 watt charging so and again you also need the right compatible adapter for that. So I was really hoping to see Samsung make some improvements there, because we’ve seen a lot of its competitors, kind of surpass the 45 watt Mark. At this point, and in addition to that that 1200 price point is still pretty high and again, even though the new camera is really great and we’ve seen some improvements, I still feel like the iPhone 14 pro beats it in a few scenarios which we’ll dive into In a bit, first of all, let’s jump right into that new camera, because that’s probably what you’re most curious about. If you watched Samsung’s unpacked presentation, you know that the company is making a really big deal about the video capabilities on this phone.
So not only did it increase the frame rate when you’re recording an 8K to 30 frames per second instead of just 24, but it’s also made a lot of changes behind the scenes to things like dynamic range and color and low light processing. So I thought what better way to test out the new video capabilities than to record my review on this phone. So right now we are shooting this part of the review of my standup on the Galaxy s23 Ultra we’re not recording it at 8K, we’re recording it at 4K at 30 frames per second, but let us know how it looks in the comments aside from video recording The other big thing we’re seeing on the s23 ultra is the new 200 megapixel camera. That’S the biggest difference from last year, at least on paper.
The s22 ultra had a 108 megapixel main camera and I have to say, photo. I was taken with the 200 megapixel resolution, did look really sharp and colorful and there’s plenty of detail, but the biggest thing that stood out to me about this camera isn’t necessarily the higher resolution, but all of the other improvements that Samsung has also made. I mentioned things like color tone, skin tones dynamic range. Those improvements also carry over to still photography as well, and those are the things that really mattered to me, the most as I was taking photos with this phone with the 200 megapixel resolution.
While it’s a great thing to have, you can really only notice it when you’re looking at photos on a very large screen, blowing them up, maybe printing them out. Those are the kinds of scenarios that you really want to use that 200 megapixel camera. For, so taking a look at some of the photo samples, you can really tell that there’s a bit more dynamic range. If you look at the Shadows, you can see they’re a little bit more defined on the Galaxy s23 Ultra versus the Galaxy s22 Ultra, and this photo of a bunch of sweets in a bakery display window is also one of my favorite photos.
That shows how the camera is different. Yes, the lighting looks a little bit yellowy, but just look at the strawberries in that top row, they’re much more sharp and crisp and colorful, and just they just look more appetizing and I think it’s a better overall photo now compared to the iPhone 14 pro and The pixel 7 Pro Samsung’s colors do look a bit exaggerated. This is something that Samsung has kind of been known for and they have improved their color accuracy a lot over the years. But I do think that if you’re taking photos with the iPhone or the pixel you’re going to get a bit more of that natural look and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing really depends on your preferences.
So here’s another example: here’s a photo that I took of my husband in that very same Bakery where we saw the strawberries earlier and he liked the s23 Ultras photo better than the s22 ultra is because the skin tone is a bit better. You could see more of the color of his beard and his eyes. All of those things are a bit more prominent, but overall he did like the iPhone 14 Pros photo better just because it is a bit more accurate, but there’s one area where Samsung really excels. In the camera, in my opinion, and that’s low light, photography, Samsung does a really great job here of capturing detail and brightness, and this photo of my cat buddy, which I somehow managed to get him to stay still for, is a really good example of that.
So looking at this photo, you can see there’s a good amount of detail in his fur and overall you know there was pretty much no light at all in this room. I had all of my lights turned off. I have the shades drawn, so this was a very, very dark scenario and it did a great job now, looking at the iPhone 14 Pros photo by comparison, you could certainly argue that this is a better picture.
It’S definitely brighter, but when I looked at both of these photos side by side on a big monitor, I did notice a bit more detail in Samsung’s photo and overall, the photo that the s23 ultra took is still better than the s22 Ultras. That photo was a little too soft and the pixel 7 Pros photo also looked a bit blue compared to the s23 Ultras, and that’s just one example. I took a few other photos in low light and the s23 ultra did pretty well in all all of them, and that especially goes for selfies.
By the way I took this photo in a really dark beader, with red lighting that really wasn’t flattering, and the s23 ultra managed to do a pretty good job at capturing details. In my face, it did a much better job than the pixel 7 Pro the iPhone 14 pro and the Galaxy s22 Ultra in this regard, and that’s important because Samsung has really been making a big deal about the new selfie camera on these phones. There’S a 12 megapixel resolution which is lower than the 40 megapixel resolution on the s22 ultra, but Samsung says it’s made some behind the scenes, improvements that should make it better at capturing more detail. It specifically mentions object segmentation, which basically means that this camera should be better at separating me from the background and even separating really fine details like strands of hair and facial features. Overall, this phone does take good selfies, but I didn’t really think it was that that much better than the s22 ultra. To be honest, I also thought the iPhone 14 pro did a better job of blending, the right amount of detail and color and accuracy.
The Galaxy s23 Ultra did a good job, but it also made some features. Look a bit exaggerated again, especially colorful things like my hair, for example, looked a bit brighter and more red than it usually is, while the iPhone 14 pro really captured that shade of magenta. That my hair usually looks like in real life, and I think it just did a better job of capturing that overall foreign Ultra also has the same zooming capabilities as the s22 ultra. That means you can zoom at up to 100 times if you’re, zooming, digitally or up to 10 times if you’re zooming optically the 100 times magnification is a bit much, but I do think the 10 times magnification is really useful, especially if you take a lot of Photos at concerts events, sporting events and things like that and speaking of the camera, another Improvement Samsung made this year has to do with stabilization.
This should be better at taking videos that are more stable and steady compared to the s22 ultra. So just as a reminder, we are shooting this review right now on the s23 ultra and not only are we using the s23 ultra, but we’re also shooting this handheld. So let us know how steady this footage looks in the comments, but now I want to talk about performance because Samsung did something a little bit different this year. So this phone runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, but Samsung optimized it for the Galaxy s23 lineup specifically.
So this means that it’s a different chip than what you’ll get in the OnePlus 11 and it should offer a bit more performance and a bit more battery life as well and so far the results that I’m seeing are pretty promising in Benchmark tests. The Galaxy s23 Ultra does outperform the Galaxy s22 Ultra and the pixel 7 Pro, and it also exports 4K video a bit faster than those phones as well, which might be useful if you’re using this phone for a lot of video projects. But that said, the iPhone 14 pro still performed a bit faster when I was exporting video, and it did also beat the s23 ultra in one benchmark test which you can check out in our full review and otherwise in day-to-day use. This felt pretty Snappy and smooth. I use this phone a lot for playing games and browsing social media and doing day-to-day things, but I also plugged it into my monitor to use it as a mobile workstation and it actually held up just fine.
There was no lag, no stuttering, no overheating. None of that stuff, so this seems like a pretty powerful phone based on on what we’re seeing so far. So overall I’ve been pretty impressed with V3 Ultra.
It really seems like Samsung, achieved what it set out to do with this phone, which was to really make a premium phone for people who want to shoot video and maybe use their phone in some professional circumstances like if you’re a photographer, a video editor. Again, we shot this entire review, except for the shots of the phone, of course, because we couldn’t do that with the phone itself, but we shot most of this review on the s23 ultra. So you know this phone really is meant for people who want more than the average phone. If you just want a reliable Android phone for taking good photos that has a reasonably sized screen, you probably don’t need to splurge on the s23 ultra.
You can go for something like the pixel 7 Pro, which is a bit cheaper at nine hundred dollars and still has really good camera performance and then don’t forget, there’s also the s23 and s23 plus. We have not tested those phones yet, but I’m really curious to see if some of these improvements we saw in the s23 ultra aside from the 200 megapixel sensor, really carry over to those phones as well. There you have it. This has been our review of the s23 ultra shot on the s23 ultra thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time. .