Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: A weekend later, I’m nearly sold

We’re only two months into 2023 and Samsung is already making its case for Smartphone of the Year with the new Galaxy S23 Ultra.

I’ve been testing the premium flagship for the past five days, snapping photos around bustling New York City — because what else do you do when a phone maker touts a 200-megapixel camera — and going about my regular routine as a growing power user.   

Also: Samsung expects S23 Ultra to account for over 50% of S23 sales 

And while I’m reserving my final review score for later this week, my experience thus far with the Galaxy S23 Ultra has given me enough confidence to say that it’s one of the most complete handsets you can buy this year, if not the most complete — whether you like and need the excessive amount of features or not.

Specifications

A tick-tock design that wins

For a company that’s not shy of flashing never-before-seen phone designs, the latest batch of market-ready Samsung phones hasn’t brought much creativity to the table. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 looked nearly identical to the Z Fold 3, and it’s safe to say that this year’s S23 Ultra cannot be distinguished from the S22 Ultra if you’re looking from afar. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It’s the classic tick-tock strategy, with Samsung keeping its changes iterative to save on costs, research and development, and much more at a microeconomic scale, while you still get a phone that scratches that consumer itch. One of the best phones available, at that.

The S23 Ultra retains the best design traits of its predecessor, like the charmingly bright 6.8-inch AMOLED display that beats the outdoor sunlight and the boxy and presumptuous form factor that makes it just as much of a Galaxy Note as a Galaxy Ultra, all while moving away from some bad habits like the overly curved edges that made writing with an S Pen inharmonious on the S22 Ultra.

Also: Galaxy S23 Ultra vs S22 Ultra: Worth the upgrade?

Well, Samsung hasn’t completely gotten rid of the curved-edge display this year; it’s still rounded off on the left and right sides, but the bend isn’t as aggressive as before. It’s looking like the Ultra will be the last Galaxy model to have a curved display, so we’ll see how long Samsung keeps that going.

The funny thing is that the S Pen writing experience is still tainted not by the curved display but by the new larger camera module. 

This year, Samsung has added a larger ring design to protect the quad camera setup on the rear, which, when set flat on a surface, causes the phone to rock as you glide the S Pen across the screen. 

This is just me nitpicking a $1,200 phone (or $1,379 for my 512GB review unit), of course, so please take it with a grain of salt.

To close out my first take on the S23 Ultra’s design, I’d like to mention that while Samsung is calling the S23 line its most sustainable phone yet, and a good portion of the Ultra’s buttons, internal modules, and ports are made with recycled materials, they all feel great and function without much compromise. The company also enhanced the durability of the S23 Ultra’s display with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which is both more durable and sustainable than the last version. I’ll have to see how the phone holds up in the long term, so stay tuned for that.

Performance

Samsung’s made some clever partnerships throughout the years, but the one that shines brightest to me is its most recent activity with Qualcomm. Namely, the custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chip on the S23 Ultra, which is quite possibly the most performant chipset that I’ve tested on any smartphone, besting the performance I got from the iPhone 14 Pro and its A16 Bionic.

More: Why the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy is a big deal

The chipset, an overclocked variant of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (3.36GHz CPU instead of 3.2GHz) made by TSMC, absolutely flies through the most common tasks like managing email, surfing the web, and video streaming, and is just as capable with more strenuous ones, like playing 60-fps games (Genshin Impact, Fortnite, Real Racing 3), 4K video editing, and operating with GPS navigation in the background.

To be fair, last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Apple’s A16 Bionic were just as competent with those tasks. The difference with the S23 Ultra is how much more efficient it is — I’ve yet to experience any app crashes with the usual suspects of banking and camera-based social apps — and how well it manages heat throughout it all. In one instance, I was able to play a good 45 minutes of Genshin Impact with 60fps locked and barely noticed any overheating problems or throttling. (‘m using the phone without a case.)

Also: Galaxy S23 Ultra vs iPhone 14 Pro: Who did it better?

Clearly, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy was the right call by Samsung and co. The mobile platform brings meaningful improvements to the Galaxy phone experience, while Samsung’s done its part to optimize the S23 Ultra with a larger vapor cooling chamber and more efficient back-end processing. Together, you get a phone that’s powerful enough for any type of user, including mobile gamers. 

How good are the new cameras?

Even after all that I have said about the design and performance of the phone, the real reason why anyone should consider the S23 Ultra, especially when cross-shopping with the other two S23 models, is the camera.

Samsung is going big this year, with a new Isocell HP2 image sensor that captures images at a startling 200-megapixel output, putting its 108-megapixel sensor of recent years to shame. That’s unheard of with any smartphone camera and brings me back to the days of the megapixel race. 

But if there’s anything you should know about megapixels, it’s that a higher count does not always correlate with higher-quality pictures. Fortunately, Samsung’s done its homework with the S23 Ultra — and it’s showing the work.

Also: 4 Galaxy S23 features we’re not talking about enough

I’ll start with a low-light photo captured during an intermission at Madison Square Garden. Besides the spotlights surrounding the Jumbotron, the whole stadium was pitch-black. Still, the S23 Ultra does an impressive job of keeping most of the elements in detail, like the architecture of the ceiling and the crowds of white, orange, and blue shirts. The lights aren’t overexposed, which I’ll credit to the 200MP image sensor, and the phone isn’t trying to make a low-light environment look like it wasn’t one — which most cameras wrongfully do nowadays.

Here’s another photo sample that demos the S23 Ultra’s 3X telephoto. I took the same shot with the iPhone 14 Pro’s 3X telephoto for comparison. While the answer to which photo looks better boils down to your preference between realism and idealism, I’d say that the S23 Ultra does a few things better than the iPhone.

The most obvious difference is how it portrays the colors of the subject. While the colors of the backgrounds on both devices look similar, Samsung applies an extra pop of saturation that makes the flower bloom just a little more. If I wanted to snap a quick picture and share it on social media, I’d feel more at ease with what the Galaxy can capture.

Secondly, the S23 Ultra wins on detail (see the yellow anthers branching out from the petals), keeping most of the flower in focus while smoothly blurring out the background. Altogether, the telephoto lens on the Samsung is as textbook as it gets.

Still, there’s one specific rough patch with the S23 Ultra’s camera that you should know of: shutter lag. It’s an issue that has plagued Galaxy phones for as long as I could remember. The delay between when I tap the shutter button and when an image is captured is still a few noticeable milliseconds longer than on competitors like the iPhone 14 Pro and Google Pixel 7, which makes a big difference when you’re trying to capture images of fast-moving subjects. 

It’s not the biggest deal if you’re capturing still subjects like the basketball stadium or flowers above, but I could see this being an issue if you’re a parent who’s trying to snap photos of a child running around or a pet at the park. 

Bottom line

I’m nearly sold on Samsung’s newest flagship. Nearly. It’s not a cheap phone by any means, and it doesn’t help that Samsung hasn’t been as generous with its trade-in offers as one might hope, but if there’s any handset that can do it all, it’s this one. The integrated S Pen experience is unique to the Ultra line and makes signing PDFs an absolute breeze, upping the base storage to 256GB (from 128GB) at no additional cost is a practical benefit for every user, and the camera system is both more versatile and reliable than the iPhone — for photos, at least.

I’ll be sharing more video samples and experiences in the coming days, so stay tuned for the latest update to this ongoing review. If you have any questions about the S23 Ultra that you’d like answered, feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll do my best to cover them.