Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: camera, power, ultra price

The feature-rich superphone has a stylus, serious speed, longer battery life and unmatched camera zoom.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra is Samsung's latest and greatest flagship smartphone with a more impressive chip, battery and camera than its predecessors. But do the improvements justify such a steep price?

At £1,249 ($1,199/A$1,949), that's £100 more than last year's model. It's the most expensive iPhone on the market. It's a non-folding one. It is one of the most advanced smartphones in the range.

The S23 Ultra is the spitting image of its predecessor, a premium and premium-feeling device, and it looks great in the cream color as shown. It has the same ultra-bright and crisp screen, the same aluminum frame and slightly less curved glass on the sides.

One of the standout features of the S23 Ultra is the fan-favorite S Pen, which was added to the S series last year and received only minor changes. It's a similar story on the software front, the phone runs Samsung One UI 5.1 based on Android 13. It comes packed with useful features including S Pen productivity tools and other lock screen customization options.

The new phone will receive at least five years of software updates from launch, including four major Android version updates and monthly security patches. Samsung has greatly improved the speed and availability of updates for older devices in recent years, meaning that most of its top-of-the-line phones in recent years are already running One UI 5.1.

Unusually for Samsung's high-end Galaxy S23 models, Qualcomm uses a stunning top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. It was first launched in the UK and all regions of the UK. While it is now sold in the US using a Qualcomm chassis.

So the new chip is a superior and successful design in Europe. Because it improves the performance of the users by 35%. But it is also used in a much more successful way. Handles heavy workloads and significantly improves battery performance.

The S23 Ultra works for more than 52 hours on a single charge. It is one of the top running smartphones. This has been used as an experiment with Apple's iPhone 14 Plus. They have been recorded for more than six hours with the same screen. Out of these six hours, one hour was spent on 5G, the remaining five hours were used on WiFi. Heavy gaming took a toll on its battery while the phone tanked unscathed. His battery survived many working days.

We have no doubts about it. Its battery life is more than three days even with heavy usage. Rather, this battery life can be extended by more than 10% by turning off the on-display.

Specifications

Main screen: 6.8-inch QHD+ Dynamic Amoled 2X (500ppi) 120 Hz

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2

RAM: 8 or 12 GB

Storage: 256, 512 GB or 1 TB

Operating System: One UI 5.1 based on Android 13

Camera: Square rear: 200MP, 12MP ultra-wide, 10MP 3x and 10x telephoto; 12MP forward>

Connectivity: 5G, USB-C, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, UWB and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (1.5 m for 30 minutes)

Dimensions: 163.4 x 78.1 x 8.9 mm

Weight: 233g

Camer

The phone has four cameras on the back and a good 12-megapixel selfie camera at the top of the screen.

As with the previous two generations of the Ultra, the quad-camera array includes telephoto 10MP modules with 3x and 10x optical zoom, which are excellent and offer a much wider zoom range than any of the competition. Images with up to 30x zoom look just as good as most other phones with less than 10x. The 12MP ultra-wide camera delivers excellent landscape and architectural images, and is used for Samsung's very good macro close-up photography mode.

New this year is the 200MP main camera, which uses the first of a new generation of sensors with almost twice the number of pixels than previous models. By default, it uses data from all pixels to maximize captured light and detail, delivering 12MP images that are among the best available across a range of light levels. The phone can also shoot at 50MP or the full 200MP, the latter producing large image files with incredible detail in bright light. However, they lack the dynamic range of 12MP frames, losing some of the advanced processing.

Low-light mode is generally a little better and usually produces well-exposed images, although it's less necessary because the camera is collecting more light to begin with. The camera app is packed with advanced and fun features, including a full RAW recording experience for those who want to do their own editing, and the most capable video on Android.

The Samsung's portrait photography, especially with the 3x zoom, delivers a natural look and fine details like flying hair.

Compared to the S21 and S22 Ultra over the past two years, the S23 Ultra offers only incremental improvements across the camera system. But it's still the most capable camera available on any smartphone, and the only one I'd consider replacing the utility of a dSLR or equivalent with its full-range optical zoom.

The price

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra starts at £1,249 ($1,199.99 / $1,949) with 256GB of storage.

In comparison, the Galaxy S23 costs £849, the S23+ costs £1,049, the Z Fold 4 costs £1,649, the Google Pixel 7 Pro costs £749 and the iPhone 14 Pro costs £1,099.