Samsungs Galaxy S23 Ultra Is The Biggest, Baddest Android Phone This Year

Every year around the same time, smartphone manufacturers release annual updates for their flagship phones. Apple does this in the fall, while rival Samsung does so at the beginning of the calendar year. Recently, these devices have mostly been incremental improvements, and to say that smartphones as a product category has matured is something of a statement from Captain Auburred.

Earlier this month, Samsung unveiled its 2023 lineup: the Galaxy S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra. For the most part, it is very similar to the S22, S22+, and S22 Ultra, just as the iPhone 14 line is strikingly similar to its predecessor, the iPhone 13.

You have to look at the top of the smartphone lineup to see the biggest innovation, the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the South Korean company's new biggest and most powerful phone. I tested this model, which costs around $1,200 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, although there are plenty of discounts available, especially if you're making decent purchases.

My Phantom Black test unit came with 12GB of storage and 512MB storage expansion and retailed for $1,380. (Also available on all three S23 models in Green, Lavender and Cream with a total of 1TB of storage.)

Samsung introduced the Ultra last year as a successor to the Note series. The S23 iteration continues in this lineup, and while Samsung may call it "Ultra," it still breaks records with heart and soul.

It's based on a modified version of Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. This year, the standard version of this chip has made its way to other Android phones, including the OnePlus 11 I reviewed earlier this month. It's a great processor, and it could make life difficult for Apple's A15 chip.

This also makes the S23 Ultra one of the fastest smartphones you can buy. On this device, everything from swiping to launching apps and games is instantaneous. However, China's Oppo's OnePlus 11 seems to be faster than the S23 Ultra - for example, OnePlus's fingerprint scanner is more responsive than the Ultra's - though benchmark results underestimate Samsung's performance. telephone.

As I mentioned, this is a big phone measuring 6.43 inches long, 3.07 inches wide, and 0.35 inches thick. The screen measures 6.8 inches, which is slightly larger than the 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Pro Max, but Samsung changed the curve of the Ultra's sides to make it more comfortable to hold in my hand than the S22 Ultra. It doesn't make it as big as it is which is a plus.

The screen is a beautiful Dynamic AMOLED display with a maximum refresh rate of 120MHz, which can be reduced to 1MHz to save power, just like in Samsung phones. This is the same 4K resolution as last year's model.

Part of the Note line, the S23 Ultra comes with the S Pen, a smart stylus with storage underneath. It's not much different from last year, but it's worth noting that the Samsung Notes app, which is designed to take notes, draw, and annotate with the S Pen, now allows multiple users to work on the same document at the same time. .

All S23 phones run Android 13, and Samsung is offering four years of OS updates and five years of security patches. But as far from "pure" Android as you can imagine, Samsung One UI 5.1 has its own personality, sometimes overwhelming. Installed programs, including many duplicates that you cannot remove, take up a lot of memory.

On the plus side, there are so many options and features in the menus and apps that you can customize the look in an almost endless number of ways.

The biggest upgrades to the S23 Ultra are its camera system, which now includes a 200MP main camera; 12-megapixel ultra wide-angle camera; two different 10-megapixel telephoto lenses with triple and 10x zoom; And a 12-megapixel selfie camera. This is the first time a consumer phone has been offered at 200MP, which is quite impressive.

As with most smartphones with multi-megapixel cameras, pixels are clustered by default in a process called pixel binning. In the S23 Ultra, groups of 16 pixels are stitched together to act as many large pixels, resulting in brighter, more detailed images. You can also disable pixel overlay and continue with the full 200MP sensor. This allows you to get more detail and happily enlarges the narrow areas of large images. It has the added benefit of bringing out the oversaturation of images that is common with Samsung. Full 200 megapixel photos have more natural colors.

I was also surprised that night shots don't always match the quality of the OnePlus 11 or iPhone 14 Pro Max's night mode. The camera sometimes turns off the lights on buildings, for example, in conditions that other cameras can handle easily.

As an added bonus for T-Mobile Houston users, the S23 line supports the latest high-speed 5G network frequencies and supports downloads up to 3Gbps. Although I didn't get it with this phone, I was able to achieve 959 Mbps while looking at the new dry bridge in Memorial Park.

The S23 comes with the same size battery as last year and you expect amazing battery life from a phone of this size. However - with average usage, I didn't have to charge this phone for two and a half days! Lasted about 36 hours with active use.

If you're looking for the most powerful Android phone money can buy, look no further. If you're a Note user and you're hesitant to ditch your device for a new rebranded model, fear not. If you have money, even if you don't, this is your next account.

dsilverman@outlook.com

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