Samsung is the better big. Big, brash, bold, kitchen sink phones. The company that introduced the phablet a dozen years ago has never given up on big dreams about big phones. Last year, the company took a gamble: it canceled the beloved Note line. While I stand by my initial assessment that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Note would have served as a good brand engagement, the rationale behind the move made sense.
For one, there was little light left between the Galaxy S and Note lines. From a design standpoint, the two had become increasingly difficult to tell apart. The idea of a large phone is more mainstream than novelty these days, and the addition of S Pen functionality to the former was the last straw. There’s also the simple fact that people just don’t buy phones like they used to, so combining two similar premium lines was a logical move.
All of this allowed Samsung to put its money where its mouth was, when it came to foldables. I admit that I had my doubts when the company declared the Galaxy Z Fold as a flagship. Promoting him to the top spot by clearing a note-sized hole in his lineup cleared up those questions, even if the jury is still out on long-term viability. Analysts put Samsung’s year-to-date foldable shipments at ~10 million units in the middle of last year. That’s nothing to shake a stick at, and a clear advantage from being pretty much the only game in town that folds.
While Samsung is far from the top phone maker in the premium space, the company, along with Apple, continues to dominate the sales charts. Huawei is out of the picture for now, and while a host of Chinese companies have happily filled that particular void, Samsung is still the premium Android smartphone to beat.
Image Credits: brian heater
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is, to all intents and purposes, the Galaxy Note 23. It’s more than just a spiritual successor, it’s the product the device would surely have become. And while it’s not the most expensive phone in Samsung’s portfolio (the Z Fold wins that context in a landslide), it’s arguably the most premium device the company has to offer. Certainly, a starting price of $1,200 qualifies as prohibitively expensive for most consumers.
The good news is that by swapping out some of the core features, you can bring the starting price down to $800 for the S23, which qualifies as a reasonable price for a flagship from one of the two big phone makers these days. As usual, the sacrifices for the entry-level model are screen size, battery (directly related to screen/phone size), camera functionality, and stylus. The 6.1-inch phone is still a flagship, and certainly not everyone needs a 200-megapixel camera sensor or a 6.8-inch phone.
The $1,000 Galaxy S23+ splits the difference up to a point. The 6.6-inch screen and 4700mAh battery are closer to what you get with the S23 Ultra. Once again, the 200-megapixel main camera is downgraded to 50-megapixel and stylus functionality is removed entirely. If you can live without those parts, as presumably the vast majority of Samsung flagship buyers can, it’s not an especially compelling upgrade, coming in at $100 more than the entry-level iPhone 14 Pro.
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One of the biggest downsides to the Note’s absorption into the Galaxy S line is that there isn’t much wiggle room for fans of the latter. There’s no, say, Note Lite in the mix. That’s probably due, in part, to the fact that phones with stylus functionality are still a relatively small niche, despite the success of the Note. From a pure numbers standpoint, it makes sense to keep the product, but perhaps not build a whole line around it.
That means if you want the feature, you need all the other bells and whistles that come with it. Samsung has offered bespoke colors across all product lines for a while, but when it comes to mass-producing consumer electronics, bespoke features are something else entirely. It’s hard to argue that anyone “needs” any of these features, but a host of premium Samsung device owners have found S Pen-based note-taking extremely useful for their work lives, and you really can’t argue with that. it’s.
Notably, all three models have the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. Qualcomm’s latest flagship brings a lot to the table, when it comes to upgrades. That starts with often-overlooked items like faster Wi-Fi courtesy of an improved radio and Wi-Fi 7. The latter, keep in mind, is a bit future-proof, with early routers supporting it. which will be released this year. Meanwhile, you can take advantage of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E speeds, depending on the network.
As always, the processing power gains are the real headline. Our S23 Ultra (with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage) scored 1434 on Geekbench 5 single-core and 4787 multi-core, which is a big jump from the previous generation, though overall scores are down. below what Apple can currently get with the former. -silicone feast on iPhone. The entire phone experience is smooth. Years of hardware and software evolution have led to a well-polished product that’s fast and responsive, switching between apps, playing games, and watching videos.
Image Credits: brian heater
The phone’s design has gotten boxier this year, moving away from the smooth, rounded corners of its predecessors. That is something of a mixed blessing. Maybe it’s just me, but the push toward perfectly smooth devices is aesthetically pleasing, but they’re literally harder to maintain. On the other hand, there is a degree to which it feels as if Samsung is leaning towards the tank metaphor in its high-end device, and those who already have trouble holding a 6.8-inch phone in one hand might have an additional difficulty. here. It’s an intentional contrast to the rounded S23 and S23+, embracing a more industrial and perhaps business-focused design.
The S23 line is the first from any manufacturer to sport Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which was announced late last year. That’s some consolation for not being first with Qualcomm’s new chipset, though as with that, you’ll likely see several (or dozens) of systems with Corning’s latest. And why not? Ruggedness should be in the top three or five most requested features among phone buyers. Flagship phones were once among the most expensive and most fragile phones you could buy.
Along with increased scratch resistance, the material is rated as being able to withstand a drop of one meter onto concrete and two meters onto asphalt. Hopefully you never have to try that with your $1,200 phone, but heck, most of us have been there at one point or another. Before leaving the subject of material, it’s important to highlight Samsung’s ongoing sustainability efforts. If I were feeling a bit more cynical, I’d say the best way to reduce e-waste is to get consumers out of the upgrade cycle every two or three years, but we both know that’s not how these things work for companies that are constantly looking for new ones. ways to move more volume.
Image Credits: brian heater
And furthermore, marketing interests aside, companies should be absolutely encouraged to reuse materials where possible. Much of Samsung’s efforts on that front have focused on making materials from old fishing nets, water barrels, and plastic bottles. In total, the phone is made up of around 22% recycled materials, according to company figures. Samsung also eliminated much of the excess shipping packaging materials a few generations ago.
The camera layout at the rear is intact. At the top is the 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera with autofocus, the 200-megapixel wide camera is in the middle, and the 10-megapixel telephoto lens is at the bottom. Another 10-megapixel lens with space zoom (3x, 10x optical) sits to the left of the 200-megapixel one.
As always, the camera is what’s important here. For years, it has been the main battlefield where iconic wars have been fought. Samsung has largely gone up against Apple on that front, though stiff competition from the likes of Xiaomi and other Chinese companies has emerged in Huawei’s absence. Despite its lack of market share, Google has also become a formidable competitor, through its masterful combination of hardware and AI-powered computational photography.
The 200-megapixel sensor is the headline, literally and figuratively. Interestingly, as these things go, it seems that the S23 Ultra is not the first phone on the market to sport the super high-megapixel sensor. That honor seems to belong to the extremely reasonably priced Xiaomi 12T Pro. Samsung has long been among the biggest suppliers of components for other companies’ phones, so it’s not a big surprise.
Anyone who follows these things will quickly realize that megapixels are not everything. That’s true, of course, but the evolution of mobile cameras has made better and better use of all those pixels. That means using binning to combine information from multiple pixels to create a kind of larger super pixel capable of gathering much more light for sharper images with less noise.
The camera suite is really excellent. The 200-megapixel sensor doesn’t feel necessary in most setups, but it does have its moments. Most users won’t have much of a need to record huge files at full resolution. If you want the full professional photos, the phone is capable of shooting in RAW, which can be edited with Adobe Lightroom by default.
For your average user, the hardware/software combination works pretty well out of the box. The Ultra does well in low light, and the optical zoom is a lifesaver. You can do up to 100x, but I mostly went above around 10x, so as not to degrade the image. All in all, though, it’s one of the best zoom, and overall camera, experiences available on a phone in 2023.
Image Credits: brian heater
As always, the screen is beautiful. The 6.8-inch AMOLED screen has a resolution of 3,088 × 1,440, compared to 2,340 × 1,080 on the S23 and S23+. All three have an adjustable 120Hz refresh rate. The Ultra also tops out at an extremely bright 1,750 nits. The larger size of the phone means more room for the battery. At 5.00 mAh, I lasted more than a day of heavy use. 45W wired charging will quickly recharge you when you’re low.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is, unsurprisingly, a great phone. It’s a true Android phone with no compromises, from the big, bright screen and generous battery to the array of cameras and S Pen functionality. It is an extremely expensive device that is the true definition of getting what you pay for.
