Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: It's almost perfect!

Samsung’s Galaxy S series of smartphones are so mature these days, that the differences from one year to the next are pretty small. This year, if you compare the Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Galaxy S23 Ultra on a spec sheet, you won’t see much that’s different. In fact, we’ve already done a comparison of these two, which you can see here.

There’s basically four main differences between the two. The newer processor, the newer camera sensor that’s 200MP now, larger starting storage and a 1TB model being available, and the front-facing sensor. Which, in a nutshell, isn’t a big reason to upgrade. However, all of these things make small changes that lead up to a larger upgrade, in the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Let’s talk about it all in our full review here.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: Design and Hardware

When it comes to the design, the Galaxy S23 Ultra didn’t change a whole lot either. Though one thing that surprised me, when I received my unit was, that the sides are flat. With the S22 Ultra, the left and right sides were curved, while the top and bottom were flat. Giving a Galaxy Note-type of vibe. Which, this replaced the Note, so that made sense. But now, the Galaxy S23 Ultra has a flat side on all four sides.

Basically, the left and right sides have the back and front curving, and then into a flat side. It’s not something I’ve seen before, but I really like it actually. At first, I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. The iPhone has flat sides, and I don’t really like it. But on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, it does make it easier to hold onto. And that’s a big deal.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra does still use Armor Aluminum for the frame, and then Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for the front and back. So it is very unlikely to shatter, and it does feel pretty premium in the hand. Though, you’ll still want to get a case for this one. Samsung has recently adopted a more of a matte finish for its smartphones, and I’m here for it. The green model that we have, still picks up fingerprints, but nowhere near as bad as a shiny backside would have gotten.

On the bottom of the phone, you’ll still find the usual ports like the USB-C port, the microphone and speaker, as well as the S Pen. The SIM card slot is also down there. Which, yes, like with the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the S Pen is included here. On the right side you’ll find the volume rocker and power button. The right and top are pretty clean here, really only having antenna bands and a microphone hole.

A brilliant display

If there’s one thing that Samsung does well, you’d have to admit that it is displays. Samsung sells its displays to almost every smartphone maker out there. Of course, Samsung does keep the new stuff for itself. So that it’s phones can have the best. And every year, Samsung puts out the best smartphone display possible. And this isn’t just me saying this, there’s proof of it. DisplayMate usually gives it the highest score ever.

So what does that mean for everyday people that are just buying this phone to use TikTok on the toilet, make some calls, send some texts, etc? Well, it’s going to look the best. The colors are super accurate, and the saturation is quite nice too.

But let’s talk about brightness. once again, the peak brightness here is 1,750nits. That’s quite bright, though the iPhone 14 Pro is still brighter at 2,000nits. But keep in mind that “peak” brightness really only lasts a few minutes. But in day to day usage, inside and out, the iPhone 14 Pro is still brighter in our experience. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Both phones are still plenty bright, and you won’t have any issues trying to use your phone outside in direct sunlight.

Overall, this is definitely the best display you will find on any smartphone. At least until the Galaxy S24 comes out next year.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: Performance

There’s big news this year on the performance front. Typically, Samsung will use its own Exynos chipset and the latest Snapdragon chipset on the Galaxy S lineup. Typically, Europe and some Asian countries will get stuck with the Exynos chipset, which is just not a good experience at all. So this year, Samsung has gone all in on a Snapdragon chipset for all Galaxy S23 models around the world. But it’s not just any Snapdragon chipset, it’s the “Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy”. It’s basically the same as the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but it is overclocked a bit, and optimized more for the Galaxy S23 than other smartphones.

With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy, it’s being manufactured by TSMC. Instead of Samsung. Qualcomm made this change after the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 last year, which is why we saw such a huge change from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 last year. And now, we’re seeing that in the Galaxy S23 Ultra. All of the attributes from the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 are here. Like better performance, better power efficiency and some pretty insane battery life.

On the performance front, it’s pretty good. Even while playing some games, the phone didn’t get very warm at all. Now, while playing some more resource intensive games like Genshin Impact, it does get warm, but not overly hot. That means that the Galaxy S23 Ultra is able to dissipate heat pretty efficiently.

The model we have here, has 12GB of RAM inside. And Samsung has gotten a lot better at handling apps in the background. It’s pretty rare that re-opening an app hours later results in the app needing to re-load. That wasn’t always the case. So the extra RAM does help here. But we can’t say yet if getting the 12GB model is better than just the 8GB model. But if you pre-order, you’ll get the 12GB model for the same price as the 8GB.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: Battery life and charging

The achilles heel for the Galaxy S22 Ultra last year, was battery life. Looking back at my review last year, I was typically hitting 6-7 hours of screen on time with that one. I had high hopes for the Galaxy S23 Ultra, after knowing how great the battery life was on Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 phones last year, like the Zenfone 9, Galaxy Z Flip 4 and the OnePlus 10T. And Samsung hit my expectations pretty nicely.

I was able to hit 9-10 hours on a charge pretty easily on the Galaxy S23 Ultra. For my testing, I kept it on the default settings. That means FHD+ resolution, and Adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. Adaptive Battery was on, and the performance profile was on standard. Most people will keep it there anyways, so this is the best way to test it. I also used the phone like it was my daily driver. Using apps like Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon, YouTube and more. This was also mixed usage of WiFi and LTE/5G. And well, it performed really nicely.

I got above 9 hours twice, and I hit 7.5 hours on another day with about 24% left. So that could have definitely hit 9 hours as well. If I put this on light mode, or even just watch less video on the S23 Ultra, I’m sure it could hit 12-13 hours of screen on time. So battery life is solved here. To me, anything above 9 hours consistently, is great battery life.

Charging isn’t so great

So what about charging? Well, the good news here is, that with this great battery life, you won’t need to charge as often. But, the Galaxy S23 Ultra still charges fairly slow compared to the competition. It can charge at up to 45W wired and 10W wireless. Both of those are far behind competitors like OnePlus who is doing well over 100W wired and around 50W for wireless. Now, I’m sure that Samsung is being cautious here after what happened with the Galaxy Note 7. But I feel like they could bump this up to over 50W without any problems.

Thankfully, with this great battery life, you can just plug in your Galaxy S23 Ultra overnight and get a full charge.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: Software

As far as software goes, the Galaxy S23 Ultra comes out of the box with Android 13 and One UI 5.1. Both of which are the latest versions from Google and Samsung. One UI 5.1 is a nice update over One UI 5 that launched with Android 13 last fall. It brings in some pretty cool features like Bixby Text Call, which allows it to answer incoming calls for you. A lot like the Google Assistant can on the Pixel.

Samsung has also copied a few features from iOS. Like the focus modes from iOS, they are now on One UI 5.1. So you can set different focus modes, like one for sleeping, one for in meetings, and another for when you’re at the gym. These work really well, and it’s something that every smartphone needs to add. Another feature that Samsung copied is, stickers. So now, when you take a photo, you can long-press on a subject to lift that subject and turn it into a sticker. It’s another cool feature that more phones need to add.

Having said all of that, the software on the Galaxy S23 Ultra is pretty good. It runs quite nicely, and doesn’t lag at all. That’s also thanks to the 12GB of RAM and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy that is included here.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: Camera

When it comes to reviewing the cameras on a new Samsung flagship, there’s quite a few things to test. The thing I hate the most, is testing the 100x Zoom. And that’s because, why would you ever need to use this? I can really only think of a few times where you’d use this. At a sporting event where you’re in the nosebleeds, or you’re far away from a sign or something and need to read it.

The 100x Zoom is indeed gotten better once again this year. But even outside in direct sunlight, it’s still going to look like a water color. Keep in mind that Samsung is not using the new 200MP camera for this. It’s the 10x telephoto camera, which is only a 10MP camera anyways. So if they up that to a higher-megapixel camera, that could definitely help with the way the pictures look.

The other zoom feature, which I’d use a lot more often, is 10x Zoom. Samsung has a dedicated 10MP sensor that is uses for this. It does 10x optical zoom, so as you can expect, this does come out looking pretty good. And it’s way better than cropping in on a main sensor. Here’s some pictures taken at 10x zoom.

Portrait mode is another big topic this year, and I’m quite surprised with it. The portrait mode on Samsung phones hasn’t always been great over the years. Especially on non-humans, like pets. Whereas, the Pixel can do portrait mode on virtually any subject. This year, that has changed though. Portrait mode is really good, and does a fantastic job of cutting out the subject too. That’s not something we’re used to seeing from Samsung.

Finally, that 200MP camera. How good is it? I’ve been skeptical of this new 200-megapixel sensor, since it was announced. That’s because, I remember using the first 108-megapixel sensor on the Galaxy S20 Ultra a few years ago, and it was not good. It had trouble focusing, the shutter was super slow, among other things. But that’s not a problem on the 200-megapixel sensor here. It’s pretty quick, there’s a slight stutter in the shutter, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

Now, how does the 200MP pictures compare to the pixel-binned 12.5MP pictures from the S23 Ultra? Samsung lets you take photos in the regular 12.5MP size, or you can do 50MP and 200MP size photos. With the 50MP, it’s pixel binning four megapixels into one megapixel. Versus pixel binning 16 megapixels into one for the 12.5-megapixel image. The main thing I’ve noticed between the three, is that 50MP and 200MP offers more bokeh, especially on photos with small objects in them. While the 12.5MP images may have little to no bokeh included.

Basically, it’s nice to have the ability to shoot in 200MP, but it’s not needed. If you really want more detail, I’d leave it on 50MP. You’ll get almost the same detail and bokeh, with smaller file sizes. 200MP pictures can have file sizes from 20-50MB, and that’s not even with RAW being used. While 50MP photos are usually closer to 10-20MB, and of course 12.5MP photos are even smaller at around 3-5MB in size.

Here’s the rest of the images taken with the Galaxy S23 Ultra in our review.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: Wrap Up

To be honest, I’m not a big Samsung fan. I’m more of a Pixel person than a Galaxy. But the Galaxy S23 Ultra has me wondering if should replace my Pixel 7 Pro? The Galaxy S23 Ultra does almost everything right. The only issue I have with it, is the size. I’d prefer a smaller phone, but then the display on this one is just so good, it’s hard not to use it. And the camera is almost better than what Google has in the Pixel. Google is really going to need to step it up this year with the Pixel 8, if it wants to keep the lead.

Samsung made a lot of incremental changes this year to the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Now if you add up those incremental changes, you’ll find that the Galaxy S23 Ultra is a lot bigger of an upgrade than you probably thought it’d be.

You should buy the Galaxy S23 Ultra if:

• You have a Galaxy S21 or older smartphone.
• You want the latest and greatest.
• You want/need a phone with an S Pen.
• You need a phone with amazing battery life
• You need one of the best smartphone cameras on the market.

You should not buy the Galaxy S23 Ultra if:

• You have the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
• You don’t like big phones.