The Galaxy S series is the pinnacle of flagship for Samsung as they bring in many newer technologies redefining the future with each of its iterations. Other than this, till 2020, we also had the Note series which was also popular as it brought the functionality of S-Pen thus providing with it all flagship specifications similar to that of the Galaxy S series.
Last year the popular Galaxy S21 series had a great start with the Galaxy S21 Ultra (Review) being the master of all flagship smartphones as it brought a newer and eye-catching design, a great LTPO AMOLED display, 108MP camera setup, a powerful Snapdragon 888 or Exynos 2100 chipset, a 5000mAh battery with 25W fast charging.
It also brought the convenience of the Note series as it is the very first smartphone in the Samsung S-series to have S-Pen support. But the S-Pen was not included with the smartphone as you had to purchase it separately. But with the Galaxy S22 Ultra, Samsung has included the S-Pen with the smartphone and also has taken some steps in bringing improvement to the table.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra brings a newer build and design, a 2.0 120Hz AMOLED LTPO display, the same triple camera setup as that of the Galaxy S21 Ultra with minor improvements, and a larger 5000mAh battery which now supports 45W fast charging. So how good is the Galaxy S22 Ultra and is it worth the upgrade over the Galaxy S21 Ultra?
Let's find out in the full review.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Design:
In terms of design. Samsung has made some changes to make it look like a Note series smartphone. There are no curved edges around like on the Galaxy S21 Ultra, instead, the design of the Galaxy S22 Ultra resembles more like the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra (Review) that was launched in 2020. This design does bring back the memories of the Note.
There is no more Counter Cut design of the camera module on the back and the rounded form factor around the sides that we found on the Galaxy S21 Ultra as this time Samsung has placed all four cameras with the LED flashlight on the back. The camera lenses are surrounded by aluminum rings that do look premium.
The cameras do protrude out a bit but not too much. The back has a smooth frosted finish which does not resist any fingerprints as such. All around the sides is an Armor Aluminum frame that feels solid while holding in hand. The Galaxy S22 Ultra weighs around 228grams which is pretty heavy. The back like all S series has an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance and also support for wireless charging.
Around the sides, the power button and the volume buttons are located on the right side whereas the left side remains completely clean. At the top, there is a secondary noise-canceling microphone whereas the bottom has a USB Type-C port, a dual SIM card slot, a primary microphone, and an S-Pen lair where the S-Pen is stored. There is no slot for storage expansion and no 3.5mm headphone jack slot also.
The presence of the S-Pen is a first for the Galaxy S-series of smartphones. In terms of protection, both the front as well as the back are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus + which is a slight upgrade over the Gorilla Glass Victus on the Galaxy S21 Ultra. The display on the front has slimmer bezels and there is a punch-hole display that is curved around the corners.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra is available in five different colors - Phantom Black, Phantom White, Burgundy, Red, and Green. Overall, the build and design feel premium and Samsung has nailed the Note design very well.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Display:
The Galaxy S22 Ultra sports a 6.8-inches Quad HD+(1440x3088 pixels) 2x Dynamic AMOLED display which is similar to that of the Galaxy S21 Ultra and also has the 120Hz LTPO display but unlike the Galaxy S21 Ultra that could go lower as 10Hz, this newer LTPO panel goes as low as 1Hz which makes it slightly efficient and depending on application usage, the refresh rate changes.
For example, when you are playing games like Call Of Duty Mobile, the display refreshes at 120Hz, if you switch to the Gallery application, then the refresh rate switches to 60Hz, and while static scrolling it switches to 10Hz. By default, the display is set to FHD+ but you can change it to QHD+. You also get the standard 60Hz option and when switched yields better battery life.
Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you do get a 240Hz touch sampling rate which aids in faster touch responses during gaming as well as multi-tasking. And since this is an AMOLED display, the colors come out punchier and viewing angles are great. You can also set the color temperature from a warmer to cooler tone also there are two modes present - Natural and Vivid.
This display has very good brightness also as with Samsung's New Vision Booster technology, you can achieve a maximum of 1750nits of peak brightness. Under direct sunlight, the display visibility is very good. The display has support for Widevine L1 so streaming HDR content on OTT platforms is a breeze and there is also support for HDR content on Youtube.
Like the Galaxy S21 Ultra, there is also an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner present on the Galaxy S22 Ultra which works fast and seamlessly. Overall, the display on the Galaxy S22 Ultra is great for media consumption.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Performance:
The Galaxy S22 Ultra, like all other S-series of smartphones, is either powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or the Exynos 2200 depending on which region you are in. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has 1x3.0 GHz Cortex-X2 with 3x2.4GHz Cortex-A710 cores and other 4x1.8GHz Cortex-A510 cores coupled with an Adreno GPU.
The Exynos 2200 on the other hand has a 1x2.8 GHz Cortex-X2 core with 3x2.4GHz Cortex-A710 cores and other 4x1.7GHz Cortex-A510 cores coupled with the Xclipse 920 GPU which is powered by AMD. Both these chipsets are based on Samsung's 4nm process and are very fast and about 20-30 percent better than their predecessors i.e. the Snapdragon 888 and the Exynos 2100.
The general performance is good and both chipsets could easily handle all the tasks like multitasking between applications, scrolling through webpages, and playing games. All the games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. run smoothly and BGMI could easily run at Ultra HDR frame rates with Extreme graphics and even Smooth frame rate and Extreme graphics.
Both smartphones do feel warmer to the touch after long hours of gaming. There is a larger vapor cooling system present which does dissipate heat faster but still, the Exynos 2200 powered Galaxy S22 Ultra was slightly warmer of the two. During multitasking, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 powered Galaxy S22 Ultra was slightly faster in app opening/closing compared to the Exynos 2200 one but the RAM management was better on the Exynos 2200 one as it could hold more applications in the memory.
Both the Exynos and the Snapdragon-powered Galaxy S22 Ultra do heat up after long hours of gaming. In terms of CPU throttling tests, the Galaxy S22 Ultra with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 could sustain around 80 percent of the sustained performance whereas the Exynos 2200 one could maintain around 70-75 percent of its sustained performance.
Also in terms of benchmarks, the Galaxy S22 Ultra powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 scored slightly better than the one with the Exynos 2200 in both Antutu v8 as well as Geekbench 5.1. In terms of 5G connectivity both support up to 16 bands of 5G and have good carrier aggregation also. There are three storage options present - 8GB RAM with 128GB storage, 12GB RAM with 256GB storage, and another 12GB RAM with 512GB storage.
Here the RAM speeds are LPDDR5 and the storage speeds are of UFS 3.1 which is good. Overall, the performance and gaming feel like a proper flagship but still, there is some overheating present on both the Exynos 2200 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 powered Galaxy S22 Ultra which Samsung should fix soon.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Software:
The Galaxy S22 Ultra runs on the latest OneUI 4.1 which is based on Android 12 out of the box. OneUI has been working very smoothly on Samsung smartphones as it provides a lot of features and customizations and with each version, there are a lot of improvements taking place. First of all, this being a Note smartphone, you get all the features of the S-Pen.
This is the same S-Pen that is also found on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra also. There are a couple of new features with the Samsung Notes app which include Quick Note which lets users add webpages as scrapbook items and this works only with Samsung browser, then there is the Collaboration View which works seamlessly on the Samsung Galaxy tablet with the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Now, this S-Pen can recognize around 12 languages more with handwriting recognition bringing the total to 88 languages which are more than that of the S-Pen of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and the Galaxy S21 Ultra. The S-Pen latency speed is also lower than that of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra from 9ms to 2.8ms when you are using the Samsung notes.
Other S-Pen features include the Screen Off Memo gesture which when taking the S-Pen out allows to jot down on the display when the smartphone display is turned off, there is also the Air Gestures which do perform different tasks in some applications like Browser, Gallery, etc, screenshot capture comes in the form of Smart Select which works well, Screen Translate allows to translate certain languages when you hover S-Pen on them.
Other than the S-Pen, the OneUI 4.1 brings one interesting feature called the Color Pallete which automatically chooses the color based on your wallpaper and applies that color in different menus and throughout the UI. The Settings menu now consists of Privacy Dashboard where you can see different applications using the camera, location and can control them.
There is also a Permissions manager to check each and everything in detail. Other features include Samsung DeX which allows the smartphone to be used as a computer and the Link to Windows feature that allows you to transfer files from either the computer to the smartphone or vice versa. Samsung's Game Launcher is present which provides features like blocking calls or notifications and shows usage of CPU and GPU during gaming.
In terms of software updates, Samsung has taken a huge step as they have now announced 4 years of Android OS updates and 5 years of security patches for the Galaxy S22 series as well as the Galaxy S21 series which makes it even better than Google. However, Samsung has not removed any bloatware which is huge in number that is present but you can uninstall them. Overall, the software experience is very good.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Cameras:
Like the Galaxy S21 Ultra, the Galaxy S22 Ultra sports a similar camera setup that includes the main 108MP f/1.8 camera, a 10MP f/4.9 telephoto camera with 10x optical zoom, a 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom, and another 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera. All the cameras support OIS except the ultrawide camera. The front has a 40MP f/2.2 camera.
The images from the main camera come out with excellent dynamic range and details look sharper. The colors look natural without any oversharpening but there is some amount of noise present in the background and the color does boost when you turn on the HDR mode. At night, the things remain similar as you get a good dynamic range with sharper-looking details with a large amount of noise is present.
Turning on the dedicated night mode does improve the dynamic range a bit, reduces noise, and also brings out the blown-out highlights in shadows and low-lit areas but there is some oversharpening taking place when turned on the night mode. The images from the ultrawide camera come out with very good dynamic range and the details look sharper but there is a lot of distortion around the edges.
However, you get a larger 120-degree field of view which allows all subjects in the frame. There is some oversharpening taking place. A similar situation takes place during the night, where there is a considerable amount of noise present but the dedicated night mode, does remove noise, improve dynamic range, and also exposure in the images.
The 10MP telephoto camera with the 3x optical zoom is slightly improved than that present on the Galaxy S21 Ultra as the images have slightly low noise, the colors look well saturated, and not too much boosted. The details look sharper and during the night also, the images come out with sharper details, low noise, and good dynamic range as there is OIS present which works very well.
The 10x zoom equipped 10MP telephoto camera does a very good job when it comes to zooming as you can achieve 100x zoom also. The details at 10x zoom come out with good details they look sharper but the dynamic range could have been improved and noise is still present to quite some extent. But things do change during the night with the presence of OIS as the dynamic range improves and noise gets reduced.
Both the telephoto cameras get a dedicated night mode also that do remove the noise but do oversharpen the images a bit and you can also use either the telephoto camera or the main camera for macro images. The macro images taken from the main camera come out with sharper-looking details, less noise is present and colors look natural and you can get focus faster when going close to a subject.
The portraits come out good on either the main camera or the two telephoto cameras. The portraits come out better on the main camera as it gathers much better light, the dynamic range is excellent, and very less noise is present with good edge detection but with the telephoto camera, you get better background blur and good natural-looking skin tones whereas the main camera does boost colors a bit.
The portraits taken during low-light come out better on the main camera slightly though both the telephoto camera and the main camera have OIS and night mode. With the night mode turned on the main camera, the dynamic range is excellent and edge detection is good with proper background blur. The telephoto camera, on the other hand, with the night mode does take good portraits but images look slightly softer and a lot of oversharpening is present.
The selfies from the 40MP camera come out with excellent dynamic range and details look sharper but these selfies do save in 10MP by default. The selfies have a natural skin tone without any oversharpening present. The portrait mode works very well in terms of edge detection and provides proper background blur without any oversharpening taking place in the background.
The selfies taken during the night come out with good dynamic range, the details look sharper but there is some amount of noise present, and turning on the dedicated night mode for the front camera does remove noise and also improves the exposure and dynamic range slightly. The night mode works well for the portrait images.
All the cameras can record 4K videos at 60fps and the main 108MP camera can also record 8K videos at 24fps. The videos come out with excellent dynamic range on the main camera and the details also look sharper with very less noise in the background. During the night, the videos come out with good and sharper-looking details but there is a considerable amount of noise present.
Turning the dedicated night mode does improve the dynamic range, bring out the blown away highlights, and the presence of OIS prevents any shakiness in the videos. The same goes for the videos from both telephoto cameras which result in good dynamic range, the details are sharper and during the night, everything works well with the presence of OIS and night mode.
The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with good details and the videos have a decent dynamic range which does need some improvement. The colors do look natural though, there is no OIS present but with the Ultra Steady Mode turned on, the videos come out with good dynamic range and there is very less noise in the background.
The front camera can record 4K videos at 60fps which comes out with excellent dynamic range, the details look sharper, and very less noise is present. The portrait videos come out with good edge detection and proper background blur on both the front and the rear main cameras. Overall, the cameras are flagship-level and provide excellent images and videos.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Battery Life:
The Galaxy S22 Ultra sports a 5000mAh battery which is the same as that of the Galaxy S21 Ultra and this battery can easily last for two days with normal usage with the display set to 120Hz and when set to standard 60Hz, the smartphone easily lasts more than two days. With heavy usage that includes playing games like Call Of Duty Mobile, streaming social media like Facebook, and rendering videos, the Galaxy S22 Ultra could only last for a day.
The standard screen-on time was around 5-6 hours with the display set to 120Hz and around 7-7.5 hours with the display set to 60Hz. The battery life does feel improved ever slightly over the Galaxy S21 Ultra but if you consider the Exynos 2200 powered one, the battery drain is slightly faster on that compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 powered one. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has slightly better optimizations also.
Last year, the Galaxy S21 Ultra was only restricted to 25W fast charging but now like the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, Samsung has brought back the 45W fast charging which is faster, and using the dedicated 45W fast charger can easily charge the Galaxy S22 Ultra from 0 to 100 percent around 1 hour 10 minutes which is far better than 1 hour 30minutes by using the 25W fast charger.
However, the saw point continues as this time also you do not get a charger inside the box except for the USB Type-C to Type-C cable as you have to purchase the charger (both 25W and 45W) separately. Other than this, the Galaxy S22 Ultra has support for 15W wireless charging and 9.5W reverse wireless charging which seems great but still, these charging speeds are slower compared to the competition.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Audio Quality:
The Galaxy S22 Ultra sports a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds adequately loud and clear. The sound comes louder on the top compared to the bottom one. The bass level is good and there is also Dolby Atmos present for enhanced sound output.
Verdict:
The Galaxy S22 Ultra feels like a complete package that is a proper flagship and the presence of the S-Pen provides multiple functionalities. The build and design are very premium and are striking to look with different color options, the 120Hz AMOLED display is great for media consumption, both the chipsets provide good performance and gaming, battery life is decent and cameras work extremely well.
The software experience is good as you get a lot of features and the presence of S-Pen means you can use it seamlessly whether needed thanks to its features and reduced latency also. Samsung has also stepped up the game by now providing the best software updates lifecycle policy beating Google also. But there are some areas where the Galaxy S22 Ultra needs some minor improvements.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra though being ba flagship smartphone does not provide good battery life and the wireless charging speeds are very slow at 15W whereas the competition is now providing 50W or 65W fast wireless charging, the cameras could have been newer, both chipsets though providing good performance do heat up quite a bit and Samsung still packs bloatware on its very high-end flagship also.
If you compare the Galaxy S22 Ultra with the Galaxy S21 Ultra, there are some minor improvements like the newer design, slightly faster 45W fast charging, integrated S-Pen, faster chipsets with slightly better performance and camera performance. Other than these, nothing has much changed so if you do not want the faster charging and the topmost flagship chipset, then still the Galaxy S21 Ultra with the slightly lower price tag would do everything well.
But if these minor improvements are necessary then considering the Galaxy S22 Ultra would not be an issue as it is a complete flagship that is again set to rule the market and make Samsung a winner out there.
1 Comments
Great article. Thank you.
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