Buying a phone is a very personal choice.
I know some people who will not pay for a phone under any circumstances.
I had dinner with a friend last month who told me when it was time for her to get a new phone, she went to her phone provider’s store and asked for whatever free phone they were offering. She doesn’t care about features or brand; she just wants it to be free.
There are also people who want the best value, and they will look over all the options and make an informed decision to buy a phone in the middle of the pack. They want a phone with a brand they’ve heard of before, but they don’t want to spend a ton.
My mom falls into this category. She has an iPhone SE – good phone, old design, low price.
Then there are people like me, who want a phone with all the bells and whistles.
This week I’m reviewing the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, which is certainly a phone will all the features.
Think about all the hardware features you’d want in a phone and you’re describing the S23 Ultra.
Huge, bright screen? Check.
Unbelievable camera? Check.
Double the storage of last year’s Ultra? Check.
Great battery life? Check
A stylus to draw on the screen? Check.
Let’s dive into the features of the S23 Ultra.
Screen
The S23 Ultra’s Dynamic OLED 6.8-inch screen has refresh rate of up to 120 hertz and a peak brightness of 1,750 nits with a resolution of 1,440 x 3,088 pixels. The front and back of the phone are made of Corning Gorilla Glass Viscus 2.
The always-on display also offers HDR10+, which is a way to display high dynamic range images with truer colors and better brightness and contrast.
The screen on the S23 Ultra is larger than any phone from Apple or Google.
Camera
The camera cluster on the back of the S23 Ultra includes a 12-megapixel ultra-wide lens, a 10MP 3x optical zoom telephoto, a 10x optical zoom telephoto and a wide-angle lens with a whopping resolution of 200 megapixels.
That’s not a typo. You may not want to shoot 200MP images, but you can, which means you can crop into the overall image to find details you’d never see with a smaller sensor.
I didn’t think Samsung could improve from the 108MP sensor on last year’s S22 Ultra, but they did.
The main camera can be set to capture photos at 12MP, 50MP or 200MP. Unless you are a professional, the 50MP setting should be more than enough, but feel free to play around with 200MP images for yourself before you decide.
The images at 200MP seemed to be more colorfully saturated and very pleasing to my eye.
The selfie camera shoots at 12MP and those images look great, too.
The cameras in the S23 Ultra are really the best I’ve seen in a smartphone. The pictures bested the competition in every test I ran, especially in low light.
The S23 Ultra can capture video at 8K at 30 frames per second, and the video field of view is larger, for better looking video.
Processor and other specs
The S23 Ultra is powered by Qualcomm’s SM8550-AC Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 CPU (octa core) with an Adreno 740 graphics processor. According to GSM Arena, the Samsung-specific version of the CPU is faster than the chips other manufacturers can get.
It runs Android 13 and is on track to get four years of Android OS updates.
It measures 6.43 inches x 3.07 inches x 0.35 inches, and it weighs 8.25 ounces.
It is IP68 dust and water resistant, meaning it is water resistant in up to 1.5 meters of fresh water for up to 30 minutes and protected from dust, dirt and sand.
The S23 Ultra can use eSIMs, but it does still come with a SIM card slot (Apple’s newest iPhones do not).
It has 5G, Wi-Fi 6e, Bluetooth 5.3 and a USB Type-C 3.2 port for sync and charging.
It has a fingerprint sensor under the display and NFC for Samsung Pay.
It comes in three storage configurations – 256 gigabytes, 500GB or one terabyte. Prices start at $1,199.99, but there are deals to be had from many carriers and from Samsung.com.
It comes in green, phantom black, lavender and cream from most carriers. If you buy from Samsung.com, you can also choose from graphite, sky blue, lime and red.
Battery
The 5,000 milliamp-hour battery (same size as last year) can run all day, but wired fast charging tops out at 45 watts, which isn’t as fast as some competitors that can charge at 100W or 120W.
There is no charger in the box, so when you look for one, make sure it is rated for at least 45W to get the fastest charging speed. With the 45W charger, Samsung says you can expect to charge from zero to 65% in 30 minutes.
Wireless charging is still 10W.
S Pen
If you fondly remember Samsung’s Galaxy Note series of phones, you’ll appreciate the S Pen, which is a stylus that you can use to take notes or just navigate around the screens and apps. Styluses never really caught on with smartphone users, but I love the fact Samsung is still offering the stylus on the S23 Ultra.
Conclusions
The S23 is Samsung’s top-of-the-line phone. It does everything but fold (and they have other phones that can do that).
It isn’t all that different from last year’s model, so if you have an S22 Ultra, you may want to hold off for another year.
This is an expensive phone, but it is in line with what Apple is charging for a similarly-equipped iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The the bumps in camera quality and processor speed, as well as the doubling of the storage options make this a nice upgrade and excellent choice, especially if you love the S Pen.
