Galaxy S23 Ultra impression
Hey, what's up
Samsung Galaxy S23 ultra review and impression.
We are also talking about differences and similarities between S23, S23 Plus and S23 Ultra
.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. let's get through it.
Galaxy S23 Ultra
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 3900mAh battery or the bigger one with the 6.6 inch 1080p OLED and a 4700mAh 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.
Display
That's it. So aside from that, you're looking at the same general shape and design as last year. Flat display, 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 a sort of a customized chip but when I ask 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 that's something we'll test, we'll see in the full review. But I mean, 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.
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 set up room so I will say they also look very HDRy 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's stacked up.
So definitely get followed 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 an eye on just because if I notice it in this perfect lighting, it's probably gonna strike again. But there is also a new selfie camera, 12 megapixels, just a lot of new imaging stuff here. So that's mainly what's new with this incremental S23 update.
Price
So S23 starts at 799 and S23 Plus starts at 999 if you're really trying to pay 200 more dollars For the bigger phone. But there's also the 1,199 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 assumed 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 5000mAh 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 120hz. 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 1,750 knits 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 of telephoto cameras, the 3X and the 10X. There's gonna 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 kicking out a 12 megapixel photo. Two, the Galaxy Camera feature integration in certain apps like Instagram. And also the 200 megapixel mode. I wanna see how good the actual 200 megapixel files really are, not that I print out photos and set 'em 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 gonna 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 Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. can get up to 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 Anker's 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 three 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 gonna link it below.
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