The gigantic flagship gets even better with all the upgrades!!
Launching every Samsung S series of smartphones has been a massive event as many users expect changes and upgrades in the newer models compared to their predecessors. This year Samsung has launched its S23 flagship lineup which consists of the Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra. The Galaxy S22 Ultra (Review) has firm ground for itself and was the pinnacle flagship last year.
It comes with some of the best specifications of last year like a premium build and design, a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, a 120Hz LTPO AMOLED display, a great set of quad cameras, a larger 5000mAh battery and much more. Also, it was the first S series smartphone that came with an in-built S-Pen which made it convenient for taking notes and doing other tasks.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra brings some outstanding upgrades over the Galaxy S22 Ultra thus keeping the same form factor. The Galaxy S23 Ultra brings along a similar design with some small tweaks, a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, a 120Hz LTPO AMOLED display, a 200MP main camera instead of the 108MP one on its predecessor and also improved battery life.
It also has S-Pen support just like the Galaxy S22 Ultra. So do these upgrades of the Galaxy S23 Ultra make it worth buying over the Galaxy S22 Ultra or still the Galaxy S22 Ultra with the slightly lower price tag the better value-for-money option? Let's find out in the full review.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Design:
The Galaxy S23 Ultra looks almost similar to the Galaxy S22 Ultra as both smartphones have a similar camera module at the back that houses the five cameras with a LED flashlight but now there are slightly thicker camera rings around the cameras of the Galaxy S23 Ultra. The curved edges have been slightly reduced on the Galaxy S23 Ultra compared to the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
The back has a smooth matte finish that provides a good grip while holding hands and does not feel much slippery. The Galaxy S23 Ultra like its predecessor has an IP68 rating which makes it dust and water-resistant. In terms of weight distribution, the smartphone weighs around 234 grams which is 8 grams heavier compared to the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Around the sides, there is an Armor Aluminum frame that looks premium and feels strong. To the right side, there is a power button with volume buttons whereas the left side remains completely clean. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot, a primary microphone and a silo for the S-Pen. At the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone only.
On the front, there are almost minimum bezels to all the sides and you get a single punch-hole camera located on the top in the middle. The Galaxy S23 Ultra is available in different colours - Phantom Black, Green, Cream, Lavender, Graphite, Sky Blue, Lime and Red. In terms of protection, both the front as well as the back is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Display:
The Galaxy S23 Ultra houses the same display as that of the Galaxy S22 Ultra i.e. 6.8-inch Quad HD+(1440x3088 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.3:9. As this is an AMOLED display, you get good colour reproduction and viewing angles are very good. Like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, you get support for a 120Hz refresh rate and this display is an LTPO panel.
Talking about refresh rate, there are two different settings - Adaptive and Standard where the Standard setting has only 60Hz whereas the Adaptive one is recommended. Like all LTPO displays, this display can scale as low as 1Hz while viewing any static content or switch to 30Hz or 60Hz while watching a video and it goes as high as 120Hz while playing games or scrolling through web pages.
Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, there is a 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming. In terms of display brightness, the display of the Galaxy S23 Ultra can go as high as 1750nits which remains unchanged from the Galaxy S22 Ultra and when the adaptive brightness is enabled it can go 1200-1300nits which is good. The display has good legibility under direct sunlight.
The display has two different settings to choose from - Vivid and Natural where Vivid mode provides slightly punchier colours on display and covers the DCI-P3 gamut whereas the Natural mode provides realistic colours and it covers the sRGB colour space. There is also a temperature slider where you can change the colour temperature to a warmer or a cooler tone.
There is also the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner that works faster and works accurately. The display has support for Widevine L1 so you can stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc also you have support for HDR10+ so you can stream HDR on YouTube easily. Overall, the display remains unchanged from the Galaxy S22 Ultra and is excellent for media consumption.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Performance:
The big upgrade where the Galaxy S23 Ultra gets over the Galaxy S22 Ultra is in terms of performance as the Galaxy S23 Ultra is powered by the powerful and flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset which is a good improvement over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset on the Galaxy S22 Ultra both in terms of CPU performance. Also, there is no overheating like on the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Though there is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset being used on the smartphone, Samsung has tweaked the chipset as it has increased the clock speed of both the CPU and the GPU where the Cortex-X3 is clocked at 3.2GHz instead of 3.1GHz whereas all other cores have the similar clock speed and in terms of GPU, it is clocked at 719MHz instead of 680MHz on other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 powered smartphones.
So definitely in terms of benchmarks, it scores slightly higher compared to other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered smartphones. In terms of CPU throttling test, the smartphone could maintain a sustained performance of around 80-85 per cent which is far better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset on the Galaxy S22 Ultra which did have a lot of thermal throttling issues.
In terms of gaming, all heavy games were handled easily and games like BGMI, Apex Legends, etc. ran easily at the highest graphics settings without any frame drops. After long hours of gaming, the back of the Galaxy S23 Ultra did not feel warmer, especially thanks to the TSMC's 4nm process fabrication and the dedicated liquid cooling system works much better.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is available in three different storage and RAM variants - 128GB/512GB/1TB storage with UFS 4.0 speeds and all these have 12GB LPDDR5 RAM which is great. Overall, the performance and gaming are definitely a good upgrade over the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Software:
The Galaxy S23 Ultra runs on the latest OneUI 5.1 based on Android 13 out of the box. There are some new features compared to the OneUI 4.0 but they are very few and some of the improvements are there in terms of connectivity, gallery, Samsung DeX, etc. The look and feel are similar to OneUI 4.0 but Samsung has optimized some animations and transitions that now feel faster and smoother.
There are now new app icons and the colour palette has now more colour combinations to choose from which get applied automatically depending on the wallpaper on the display, widgets can be stacked you can switch between these widgets also. There is a new battery widget which shows the battery level of all the Galaxy devices connected to the smartphone.
There are new features like Modes and Routines where you can choose different modes depending on your actions like Sleep, Theatre, Driving, Exercise, etc. and the wallpaper also gets changed depending on the specific Mode you choose. OneUI 5.1 has a special feature called Continue Browsing on PC where you can use the Samsung internet mobile while using DeX which allows the internet to be used on the PC easily.
Some of the tweaks are present in Photo and Video editors where you get new emoji stickers, there are now more ways to edit GIFs, and there is an AI Image Clip option where you can tap on an object in the image and can share, save and copy somewhere else. All the S-Pen functionalities are carried from the Galaxy S22 Ultra like Quick Notes, Screen-Off Meno lets you write a short memo on the black screen (display turned off), etc.
Other features like Air View lets you hover over the image in the gallery to give a larger preview, Smart Select present which lets you take differently shaped screenshots and pin them on display, and Screen Translate translates the language if you hover the S-Pen on it. There are a lot of features with the S-Pen that you can use daily.
However, though OneUI provides a lot of features and is well-optimized, it does come with some amount of bloatware in the form of some third-party applications that can be uninstalled. In terms of software updates, Samsung has always been at the forefront as you will get another four years of AndroidOS updates and five years of security patches.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Cameras:
The biggest upgrade that the Galaxy S23 Ultra gets is in terms of the main camera where now you get the newer 200MP f/1.7 Samsung HP2 sensor for the main camera compared to last year's 108MP Samsung HM2 sensor for the main camera found on the Galaxy S22 Ultra. Other cameras include a 10MP f/4.9 telephoto camera with 10x optical zoom, another 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera with a 120-degree field of view.
On the front, there is a 12MP f/2.2 camera for selfies. The images from the main camera come out with a great number of details that look sharper and colours are now vivid and punchier with slightly brighter shadows. The dynamic range is good and all these are the results from the 50MP mode. The 200MP mode also takes images with an excellent level of detail that look sharper but the dynamic range is not as good in the 50MP mode.
Also, there is a slight crop in the images to prevent noise in the background. In low light, the Galaxy S23 Ultra uses Auto Night Mode which triggers automatically during the night and it takes very good details that look sharper, though it does apply some processing. You get balanced exposure with very less noise and great dynamic range. You can also disable the Auto Night Mode.
The ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of images where the details look sharper and the dynamic range is also great with less noise in the background. The colours look natural without any oversharpening and there is no distortion around the edges which is a slight improvement compared to the Galaxy S22 Ultra. You can also use the ultrawide camera as a macro camera by going closer to an object.
At night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of images that come out with a great level of detail and good dynamic range but colours look slightly overprocessed and there is some amount of noise present in shadows and very low-light areas. All these are results with the Auto Night Mode turned on and if you choose the manual Night Mode then you get almost no noise and great dynamic range.
The images from the 10MP telephoto camera with 3x zoom come out with a great level of details that look sharper and have less noise in the background- but if you further zoom, there is slightly more noise and images look grainier but there is also 10x optical zoom telephoto camera which works great with an excellent level of details and vivid colours with almost no noise present in the background.
At night, the 3x zoom telephoto camera takes some images with slight noise and details look average in shadows with the Auto Night Mode but if you use the manual Night Mode, the images have much better dynamic range and almost no noise. The 10x zoom telephoto camera does an excellent job in terms of details which looks sharper with almost no noise and has a good dynamic range with/without the Night Mode.
The main and the 3x telephoto camera does a good job in terms of portraits especially the 3x telephoto camera does a good job in terms of subject mapping, and edge detection, the skin tones look accurate compared to that of the portraits taken from the main camera but still, the difference is very marginal. The noise is almost less and now Samsung has improved the depth mapping so the portraits are slightly better compared to the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
In terms of selfies, the Galaxy S23 Ultra sports a 12MP camera which does seem to be a downgrade over the 40MP selfie camera on the Galaxy S22 Ultra but still, this selfie camera does a great job in terms of dynamic range, colours look natural and details look good with almost no noise in the background. The portrait selfies come out with an excellent level of edge detection and background blur.
All the cameras of the Galaxy S23 Ultra can record 4K videos at 60fps and the main camera can now record 8K videos at 30fps instead of 24fps as on the Galaxy S22 Ultra. The videos from all the cameras come out with great details and the dynamic range is very good. Overall, the cameras are good but provide a slight improvement over the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Battery Life:
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is powered by a similarly sized 5000mAh battery as that of the Galaxy S22 Ultra. Still, considering the more efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and the OneUI optimizations, it does provide good battery life as with normal usage that includes casual web browsing, streaming social media, and listening to music, the smartphone easily lasted for two and half days with the display set to Adaptive.
With heavy usage that includes playing games like BGMI and Apex Legends for two-three hours, rendering videos, running benchmarks, continuous calls for 6-7 hours, etc. the smartphone lasted for one and a half days or maybe slightly more which is really very good. The standard screen-on time was around 6-7 hours with heavy usage and with normal usage, you can get around 7-8 hours of standard screen-on time which is very good.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra does ship with a charger inside the box but it does support 45W fast charging so you can use any fast charger like 60W/120W which will take around one hour which is good but still it is not the fastest. Other than this, there is support for 15W fast wireless charging and 9.5W reverse wireless charging also. The battery life is a great improvement over the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Audio Quality:
The Galaxy S23 Ultra sports a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds loud and clear with a good level of bass. The Dolby Atmos does provide sound enhancement in videos, while playing games, etc. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack present.
Verdict:
Overall, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is a great package and the king of flagships as it brings some very heavy specifications like a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, a striking design, a 120Hz LTPO AMOLED display and stereo speakers for multimedia consumption, excellent battery life, great set of cameras and good software experience with an excellent cycle of software updates.
Also the support for S-Pen with a host of features for multi-tasking provides a great experience on a daily basis. However, the charging speeds could have been faster as the competition is proving 120/150W fast charging speeds and it would have been good if Samsung would have provided a fast charger inside the box.
Now if you compare the Galaxy S23 Ultra with the Galaxy S22 Ultra then you are getting better performance and gaming with no throttling, a better camera experience and also much better battery life as it does not heat up. However, if the newer set of cameras are not important then still the Galaxy S22 Ultra is a good value for money option as it is now slightly cheaper but considering all other things, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is worth the upgrade over the Galaxy S22 Ultra making it a true king of all flagships.
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