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In the S23 Ultra, there’s a slightly curved display with softened edges and a good solid heft, thanks in part to a use of metal and glass in a way that screams premium. Simply put, there is no conceivable reason beyond "owning the newest" to upgrade from the S22 Ultra to the S23 Ultra. The camera isn't a massive leap, and neither is the spec bump. That upgrade would be an upgrade for upgrade's sake.
Big phones are all the rage, and if you’re after one of the best of the biggest, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra might just have your name on it. About the only major issue we have is that the camera can also feel a touch slow to fire, which seems to be a consistent Samsung issue. We've seen it on what must have years worth of Samsung phones, and it's a bug that just doesn't seem to go away. In fact, tested in Sydney on the Telstra 5G network, we found the S23 Ultra was able to hit into the 750Mbps mark, though your mileage may vary based on your network, where you are, and the strength of the network at the time. Samsung hasn't made many changes to the S-Pen, which can still feel a touch flimsy, but isn't bad overall. It still does all the things you'd expect an S-Pen to do, such as writing and scribbling on the screen when the phone is on standby, doing more when the phone is actually awake, and using it as a presentation controller with the handy button on the inside. Yes, it was over ten years ago, and while some laughed at the idea, Samsung managed to make the big phone work. We got past the term “phablet”, and these days, big is in. Every phone is big, with small phones more difficult to find than ever.You'll still find four cameras to speak of in the Ultra, but strangely they're not evenly matched: there are also two 10 megapixel cameras for 3x and 10x telephoto and a 12 megapixel ultra-wide camera, alongside that massive 200 megapixel shooter. Inside, everything is not quite the same, as the S23 Ultra gets an upgrade of parts for a new year. However, if you’re used to a smaller phone, using the S23 Ultra isn’t necessarily easy, and will become a two-hand phone. Close-up images through the complex camera setup sees some interesting shots that are possible, but a slightly slower lens on each means you won't find as much light control. To put it simply, Samsung's all-round flagship phone is beating the performance of a phone made for gaming, telling you just how useful the Galaxy S23 Ultra will end up being for gaming, or anything else you throw its way.
For instance, if you have no problem with large phones, you’ll likely love the massive 6.8 inch size of the S23 Ultra, and dig the S-Pen built into the body. That last bit is one of the main features, though it hasn’t changed dramatically from last generation, offering a way to draw and write on the screen, whether it’s off or on standby, and giving you some extra controls if you need them, too. Overall, achieving a full day of strong use is a great outcome, and for the rest of us not living on our phone at all hours of the day and night, two days is quite impressive. It's the sort of battery life we've yearned for, and virtually no one is delivering. Great work, Samsung. Of course, to get this sort of performance and feature set, you need to be prepared to pay for it, and the Galaxy S23 Ultra is not an inexpensive handset. Not by any stretch of the imagination.Once you go beyond 10X, you're entering Samsung's "Space Zoom" territory, where a combination of digital zoom and software will find and sharpen edges, and theoretically let you get close. Even comparing the S23 Ultra to last year’s S22 Ultra and the S21 Ultra before that, the newer handset has no problems demolishing its siblings, beating it on benchmarks in single core, multi-core, and graphical performance. We're not likely to use the S-Pen, but others could, and between the flexibility of that feature and not necessarily needing to have a tablet, plus the fairly solid versatility of the camera and the impressive system performance, Samsung's S23 Ultra is about as worth the price as nay other flagship phone released today. There is clearly an abundance of performance in this phone, thanks in part to that new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, but also the 12GB RAM our review S23 Ultra has inside.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that starts with the system spec, which is upgraded from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. If that just reads like jargon, think of it as the latest and greatest fast mobile chip, because that’s exactly what it is. In general, high-end phones tend to capture at 12 megapixels, and with the S23 Ultra, you're effectively getting 16 times the photo data for every pixel in its images, a feature specific to Samsung's Isocell HP2 sensor, which this phone uses. With all of that tech inside what is easily one of the biggest phones around, using the phone can be a bit of a mixed bag. It all sits under a big 6.8 inch slightly curved display, something Samsung’s calls an “Edge” display, running a Dynamic AMOLED panel at Quad HD+ (3088×1440) and 120Hz. There’s support for HDR here and Corning’s scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protecting things, while the rest of the body is made from aluminium and glass, measuring 8.9mm thin and weighing 234g.For the most part, however, the camera delivers quite a bit of performance, and few will really have a reason to complain about it. Battery That said, if you came from last year’s model, you won’t see much of a difference. It is more of the same, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Features Like all other 5G phones released in Australia, the S23 Ultra is also 4G compatible, so even when you're not getting super-fast 5G, you should still get pretty solid 4G, too. Camera While the system performance has received a bit of a boost from the new Snapdragon chip, the biggest upgrade may well be on the camera side of things, as the main 108 megapixel wide angle camera is upgraded to an even bigger 200 megapixel camera, and it is an interesting addition.
Glance at the Samsung S23 Ultra and you’ll see a phone that resembles much of the current focus of last year’s phone, the S22 Ultra. The camera feels slightly more flush and the whole thing is possibly a bit firmer, but Samsung’s design is largely the same.It's an idea Samsung has been pushing since the S20 Ultra popped up, and while the tech is getting better, close-up images at extreme limits on the S23 Ultra aren't a huge improvement. You can snap a decent picture of the Moon, but most pictures outside of this won't be super brilliant, and really undermine the best feature of the S23 Ultra camera: that impressive 200 megapixels. Whether triggered by on-screen button or volume, the camera in the S23 Ultra can be a little lazy to fire its shot. Sometimes it nails the speed, but other times, you just feel like the S23 Ultra hasn't heard Lin-Manuel yet, and is just about ready to throw away its shot. Low light is also pretty solid, putting up some decent competition against rivals from Apple and Google, which is where most of the action is. We're not sure Samsung is beating either, with slightly sharper low-light images from the iPhone 14 Pro Max and the Google Pixel 7 Pro. As for how this relates to real-world performance, the good news is you shouldn't need to think about it at all. Using the S23 Ultra in a day-to-day way should see apps work beautifully and little to no lag in most of what you do.
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