The Galaxy S23 Ultra: What’s Happening in Galaxy’s Next Laptop? A Tale of Five Laptops, One Screen at a Time
The S23 Ultra seems like a conservative update on the surface, with a faster processor and some updates to the design. The craziness of the camera setup and software tricks on the new high-end phone could end up making it the best option for serious photographers and multitaskers.
There is no trade-in required to take advantage of the $800 off the S23 Ultra, on top of the free Galaxy Watch 5 and the Tab S7 FE. If you pre-order through Verizon, you’ll be given a free storage upgrade, and you can also swap carriers for a free $200 eCard.
The S23 Ultra feels good to hold, with some extra grip over the S23 and S23+, thanks to its flat edges. I was a bit partial to Cream and Lavender, though Phantom Black and Green looked fantastic up close. The S22 Ultra had a Phantom White and Burgundy option but now it is replaced by Cream and Lavender, I am happy about that.
The rest of the camera experience is just as fantastic. Portrait mode photos look amazing, the Expert RAW camera app from Samsung gives you an insane amount of control over how your photos look thanks to professional controls and Adobe Lightroom integration, night mode helps in especially dark situations, and the ultra-wide camera remains wide enough to capture full landscapes without missing out on anything important.
The pomp around smartphone launches is often deflated by one word: iterative. The new phone fails to add any of the features that were found in previous models. It’s a matter of if there is a crazy new trick, or if it’s just a ruse.
The Galaxy S23 series isn’t the lone hardware announcement from the company. At its big media event today in San Francisco, SAMSUNG unveiled five new laptops with the new name of GALAXY Book3 Here’s everything that was announced at the show.
To make the screen tougher to scratch or crack, Samsung is employing Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus 2, a material that is purportedly more durable than Corning’s previous formulas and contains more post-consumer recycled material. And while Apple has long used stainless steel for its iPhone Pro models, a choice which improves those phones’ durability and scratch resistance, Samsung’s phones are weirdly all still made from aluminum. The S23 line does have more recycled components than last year, however; the company says it has doubled the number of recycled parts on the S23 Ultra to 12, from the speaker module to the volume keys.
Getting Free for $5/momenta$ to WIRED: A Comparative Study of Galaxy S23, Galaxy S14, and Android
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It’s not the only surface differences. The phones become even more unique when you dig deeper into their displays, design, and camera array. To make choosing between both lineups a bit easier, we’ve compared some of the more relevant features to show you how they stack up against one another on paper.
Lastly, you can’t compare Apple and Samsung phones without some mention of their respective operating systems. Samsung’s S23 phones ship with Android 13, while Apple’s iPhone 14 comes with iOS 16. Both are solid operating systems, and which you should choose often comes down to a matter of preference. Apple is known for simplicity, while Android is great for flexibility and personalization. Then there are the different devices you would be considering.
The differences between the lineups look small at first glance. In terms of display size and dimensions, the same model in the same lineup from Apple and its rival from the South Block is the same as the other one. The phone weights slightly less if the phone is taller and heavier than the other one.
Design-wise, the iPhone 14 lineup notably lacks the Galaxy S23’s physical SIM card tray. That is because Apple uses a technology called eSim, which might make it easier to switch between devices and plans. In practice, however, we found it’s complicated if you’re switching between Android and iOS, and while most major US cell phone networks support eSIM, not all do.
However, it’s important to note that more megapixels doesn’t translate into better photos — something we pointed out last year when comparing pictures taken with the S22 Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro. Samsung’s camera sensor often bins pixels together to improve light, which actually results in a more manageable 12-megapixel photo. It’s possible to take a 200- or 50-megapixel photo if you want to, but that kind of resolution is overkill for the average 4×6 print.
The Dual-Sensor Pixel S23 Ultra & S22 Ultra: Two Optical Lenses for the Camera Purpose
Many of the same features can be found in the two, including the Live Text feature, which is able to grab text from videos and photos. Some of the other differences are minor. Although it has many customization options, the ability to addWidgets to the lock screen is limited by the phone’s operating system. They don’t come with Apple’s drag-and-drop visual look up tool, which can let you drag and drop objects from a photo into another app.
It’s unsurprising that taking 200 pictures per second with the new sensor is one of the least interesting things to do with it. Sure, the option is there. Tap a couple of menu options, press the shutter, and bam — 200 million pixels at your disposal. As long as the lighting is good, you’ll find a ridiculous amount of detail when you zoom into those photos. If it is sheer detail that you want, then you will get it, even if the images lack the wide dynamic range that is available in the standard shooting mode.
As good as the S23 Ultra can be, it occasionally turns out to be a dud. It can get into trouble turning the saturation or HDR up to 11 once in a while, and unless you’re taking a photo of the actual moon, you should just stay away from the digital 100x “Space Zoom” setting because it looks like pixelated garbage.
200MP photos can also be taken. There’s a button in the camera app that lets you turn it on, and boy is it fun to play with. You won’t want to use it all the time since it’ll eat away at your storage a lot faster than normal photos, but if you want to capture something with a ton of detail or plan to print the photo after it’s taken, this is the mode to be in.
The buck doesn’t stop at the main camera. A 12MP 120- degrees ultra-wide, a 10MP telephoto, and a 10MP periscoping telephoto lens with 10x optical zoom are all part of the pack. The S22 Ultra have an improvement in optical image stabilization, which is so good that you would think your cell phone was on a tripod when taking zoom shots.
Overall, this is one of the best camera experiences you can have on a smartphone. The Pixel 7 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro come second to this phone in a lot of different ways, from sensor resolution and zoom capabilities to image quality and versatility. The $1,199 phone is so good, it makes it worthy of a name such as Ultra.
The back of a phone has cameras on it. The backplate has a frosted glass finish and rails made of aluminum, which looks really premium. Speaking of the sides, they’re a lot flatter than they used to be, which gives the device a very similar feel to previous Galaxy Note devices.
The curves on the left and right sides were reduced for this generation so that content doesn’t spill over as easily. It’s especially helpful with the S Pen, since you have more room to draw. It’s also a lot nicer to look at, since you will not have to deal with the light reflecting off the curves in the glass.
How Well Does Your Galaxy Feel? An All-Day Battery Comparison of the Galaxy Note and OnePlus 11 Geekbench Scores on the S23 Ultra
The extra power is evident in the chart below, where we compare the OnePlus 11’s Geekbench scores to those on the S23 Ultra. The 8 Gen 2 For Galaxy is more powerful than Apple’s A16 Bionic, but it’s not the most powerful chip.
All that is to say you can get through a day of moderate use with the S23 Ultra a little more comfortably, and it stands up a bit better to heavier use. If you plan on doing a lot of processor-heavy stuff like gaming or, I don’t know, measuring every room in your house in VR, then you’ll probably still need to recharge before the day is done. This is an all-day battery, with a little more wiggle room, for most of us.
I had a phone called Asphalt 9 and I ran it like any other phone I have tested. The phone stayed cool and didn’t experience any dropped frames or slowdowns, and I had a great experience with it.
The box for the S23 Ultra has OneUI 5.1, which is based on the popular mobile operating system. This is the best version of the skin that I have come across. It is almost identical to OneUI 5.0 in terms of features, looks and functions, but it is much more efficient and responsive this time around.
I used the Z Fold4 for a long time and I had a feel for how it was. I like it, but it felt a tad slower than either Apple or Google’s own software. One UI 5.1 flips that on its head, as the S23 Ultra feels just as fluid and snappy. Is it the new processor? The faster storage? Are you talking about good old fashioned software optimization? I chose the latter, because everything I do on my phone feels more responsive than it has in the past.
The Galaxy Note lives on in the S23 Ultra by way of its embedded S Pen stylus. There are no major updates to the S Pen or its features this time around, though the slightly flatter screen edges are designed to provide more surface area for writing. With the S22 Ultra’s curvier edges, you’re more likely to accidentally run the stylus off the side of the screen as you’re writing.
The S23 Ultra usually gets me to the evening with less than 30 percent of the day left, and it usually takes about four hours to complete. Extra drain on the battery happens when you use the always-on display. I tried putting it through the wringer on a day with more intensive activities — navigation, a 30-minute Zoom call, 40 minutes of streaming video, lots of camera use, including 4K video recording — all off of Wi-Fi. The battery fell to 25 percent by the end of the day. Truthfully, I could have gone a little harder on the phone, but I came down with food poisoning in the afternoon, which put a damper on my ability to use the phone or do anything at all.
The S23 Ultra: A Brick in your Pocket and a Brick in Your Pocket: Why Samsung Bundles All its Apps with a Galaxy Phone
The device is not the most powerful in the US, but it is capable of charging from zero to 50 percent in about 30 minutes. You get 15W wireless charging and 4.5W reverse wireless charging which will let you charge your earbuds on the go. Samsung definitely included everything you’ll need when it comes to juicing up.
It’s also pretty heavy. At 234 grams, it’s six grams lighter than the iPhone 14 Pro Max but also 22 grams heavier than the Pixel 7 Pro. The phone is not a toy but a brick in your pocket.
It is not a problem until you realize how many apps there are, which is why SAMSUNG bundles all its own apps with the S23 Ultra. I counted 58 on my unit, and that doesn’t include other pre-installed apps like Microsoft 365 and Netflix. It will reduce your phone’s overall capacity by about twenty five percent, because it eats up so much storage space. For those that don’t use Samsung’s stock apps and prefer alternatives like Google’s, it’ll feel like a waste of space.
Samsung is also still displaying advertisements in its own apps, which looks and feels as crummy as you’d think it does. The amount of ads it shows has luckily decreased over previous Galaxy phones, but they’re still around. Samsung Pay and Galaxy Store like to advertise promotions from third parties, while the Samsung Members app regularly reminds me to preorder a Galaxy S23 Ultra… while I’m holding one.
$1,200 is a lot of cash to spend on a new phone. If you can live without features like the 200MP camera and S Pen, the regular Galaxy S23 can be had for hundreds less and still gives you great performance, battery life, and software features. Similarly, Google’s flagship Pixel 7 Pro is almost always on sale, sometimes for $599 to $699 which is nothing short of an amazing deal.
That’s all good news. The bad news is that it is very expensive at $1,200, more than the starting price of thePixel 7 Pro and more than the $1,000 starting price for the new Apple device. There are some familiar sore spots with Samsung software, like its insistence on including its own app store in addition to Google’s. And although the camera system can produce stunningly good images, it occasionally makes weird choices and comes up with a photo that’s just downright bad.
All that said, it is still a very big and relatively heavy phone. The screen is a 6.8 inch screen with a top 120hertz refresh rate. It’s lovely to use and basically the same as last year’s. My one complaint is with the embedded fingerprint sensor, which is inconsistent and a beat slower than the one I just used on the OnePlus 11 5G. Thankfully, face unlocking is very quick. With both biometric security methods enabled, I found that one or the other worked quickly enough.
There are, of course, all the other trappings of a high-end phone: a robust IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, all flavors of 5G, wireless charging, fast 45W wired charging (charger not included), and built-in storage of at least 256GB — Samsung doubled the base-model storage this year.
The new chip ran cooler when downloaded than the old one, but it was only slightly warm while the phone was resting on a heat-insulating couch cushion. The S22 Ultra was borderline uncomfortable to hold after doing something like that. Gameplay is incredibly smooth, with a barely perceptible hiccup here and there as it loads more area data.
The latter worked flawlessly on my 2016-era Samsung TV. And despite it being an older model, the TV connects to the S23 Ultra via SmartThings, too. The basic functions of the TV, like volume, channel, and source are controlled by the app on the phone. At long last, I thought I’d conquered my need to get off the couch and find the remote. Unfortunately, my TV is just old enough to lack support for a crucial feature — powering on via mobile. Looks like I will still need the remote after all.
Galaxy Notes: The S23 Ultra Review Camera Battery Screen Pencil: What Has It Meant to Reorganize My Life?
The slight curve on the S23 Ultra threw me for a loop, but it happens less frequently with the S23 Ultra. One of the templates in the notes app includes a left-aligned column of boxes to write in, but when I started writing in letters to mark days of the week, I had very little space to work with since the stylus kept running into the curve. I’m hoping for a totally flat display in 2024.
I’m also on a mission to reorganize my life, and I found it genuinely useful to replicate some of my running IRL to-do lists with digital ones pinned to my home screen. Has it made me organize more? The jury hasn’t reached a decision on that one. It feels like a happy medium between the convenience of an app based to-do list and the feeling of writing a note.
Combining those dots into groups and treating them as individual parts of a larger whole improves the image in less-than-great lighting conditions. In bright light, the sensor uses something called a re-mosaic algorithm to mimic a traditional color filter pattern and use pixels individually and capture more detail. Even when you’re in the default shooting mode, which downsizes images to 12 megapixels, you should see the benefits of all that extra detail capture.
It does a surprisingly good job all the way to 30x and comes up with images I’m perfectly happy using on Instagram. Would my 30x Space Needle photo look great as an 8×10” print hanging on my wall? Probably not. But it’s well beyond the “good enough” threshold for social media. Digital zoom has come a long way.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/23598871/samsung-galaxy-s23-ultra-review-camera-battery-screen-s-pen
Galaxy S23 Ultra-Review Camera Battery Screen Pencil: Loosely Dark Matter in Back-to-Back Portraits
In challenging situations, low-light photos are generally okay, though a few weird things happen. In a couple of back-to-back portrait photos of my toddler, he looks distinctly orange in one and pale in the other. Perhaps the colored walls and light sources threw the camera for a loop, but as much as possible, it took the photo off the rails.
A couple of my low-light portraits have a bit of an unnatural HDR look about them, with over-brightened shadows. It’s best to let the phone decide if night mode is appropriate when it’s truly dark enough.
One of the best features of the game is its portrait mode. It’s hands down the winner when it comes to subject isolation and manages to hang on to incredibly fine details like individual hairs. It looks like a classic cardboard cutout look when the background blurs, especially on the 1x setting. It’s not as noticeable in 3x zoom portraits, which generally look fantastic.
Video quality is good, too; recording is available at up to 8K/30p, though I stuck to 4K for the most part. The clips have nice color and detail. Indoors, I saw a tendency to flatten dynamic range in a way that turns bright whites slightly gray. Bright colors look a little oversaturated, too. I didn’t hear any complaints about the video quality from his grandparents, and it was more than good enough to grab clips of a very active toddler.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/23598871/samsung-galaxy-s23-ultra-review-camera-battery-screen-s-pen
How many times should you hit ‘agree’ to use a $1,200 Galaxy S23 Ultra or $1,800 S23 to make a smart phone?
It’s also not the most approachable device. The steep price tag is going to put a lot of people off. It can take a little fiddling to get the software to work on your phone. It should be possible to do that for less on a $1,200 phone.
Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It is impossible for us to look at every single one of the agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.
I have a decision to make. Last month I reviewed the Galaxy A14 5G, a phone that cost $200 and proved that you don’t have to spend a lot to get a great phone. I reviewed the top-tier $1,200 Galaxy S23 Ultra and $800 S23, which is nice to spend money.
If you have a flagship device that was released in the last two years, new ones don’t really give you a reason to upgrade. If you have an older device in your pocket or are interested in a wallet-friendly device, then you should definitely look at it.