Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review

11 February 2023


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  • Nameless
  • 0xQ
  • 12 Feb 2023

Camparing image samples to S22U, S23U looks definately better in every camera module. However colors a bit on colders side, perhaps more natural look, and slightly over-exposed. I'm sure those will be fixed by the updates.

    • r
    • raycon
    • LaC
    • 12 Feb 2023

    I can confirm that the battery life test gains translate to real life battery life 👍
    I think it's the only Samsung that hasn't disappointed me in the last 3-4 years

      mm, 12 Feb 2023arstechnica has the article among othersYah go read your articles. Hahaha.

        Looking at test shots, some detail is better on vivo/different brands at 50mp, meaning hi res on samsung is not very consistent.
        Vivo plus ver. win this time for me. Wish others adopted hi res raw on all cameras soon, not much of competition.

          Super Android 22, 12 Feb 2023Pretty much every flagship or even mid ranger i believe atl... moreCorrect. Virtually every other Snapdragon phone has something more than vanilla aptx, except Samsung. This appears to be a deliberate ploy to push people towards AKG headphones and the Samsung scalable codec.

          This means a premium phone is unable to perform as well as it should with a great variety of wireless headphones and earbuds. That's more Apple than Android in approach.

          I'm a S22U owner and this comtinued approach by Samsung means by next phone will be a Pixel, Oppo, Sony or sone other manufacturer, as all those phone manufacturers play proper attention to Bluetooth audio codec support. If the S23U had this festure, I'd have upgraded in a heartbeat.

            • ?
            • Anonymous
            • a0V
            • 12 Feb 2023

            Anonymous, 12 Feb 2023Since when samsung has well calibrated screen? They did ... moreIt's true. Samsung displays are either oversaturated or too muted. Apple are the best when it comes to color calibration.

              jiyen235, 12 Feb 2023Let's see, NO improvement in brightness, Samsung thems... moreYour just nitpicking :|

                • G
                • Galaxy A53 user
                • ijd
                • 12 Feb 2023

                Galaxy S23 is the best Flagship i ever seen in my life.

                  Anonymous, 12 Feb 2023wait.... and how many user use that? 0.001% ? And how many ... morePretty much every flagship or even mid ranger i believe atleast (talking about aptx adaptive). My find x5 has adaptive and tws+, LDAC and LHDC (thats a xiaomi, huawei, oppo and realme thing only) plus aptxHD. Most decent wireless earbuds or headphones use either adaptive or LDAC for sony gear, worst case youll get aptxHD.

                  Qualcomm are releasing aptx LL soon i think which is meant to be pretty impressive and hopefully widely adopted.

                    • ?
                    • Anonymous
                    • TRF
                    • 12 Feb 2023

                    Take another decade to see a Great leap forward breakthroughs

                      • ?
                      • Anonymous
                      • Lkg
                      • 12 Feb 2023

                      Nick Tegrataker, 12 Feb 2023Please tell me you're trolling without telling me you&... moreI thought only on reddit ppl liked to use this dumb expression.

                        • ?
                        • Anonymous
                        • pXb
                        • 12 Feb 2023

                        Hi!
                        Please clarify the part with the zoom. You said the amount of samples given says your opinion. Maybe for you it's clear how you mean it - for me sadly not so :(

                          Nick Tegrataker, 12 Feb 2023Please tell me you're trolling without telling me you&... moreprobably just a copy paste message generated from chatgpt.
                          just sayin'

                            Anonymous, 12 Feb 2023Mine has 120Hz. I turned it off. Was not any worth. I don't see anything wrong with that. The only time I use a high refresh rate is during gaming since you can notice the difference even if you use the Medium setting. Most of the time, it's 60Hz all day long.

                              • K
                              • KunwarPahuja
                              • GR@
                              • 12 Feb 2023

                              Will there be a S23 FE or S22 FE?
                              S21 FE wasn't really great.

                                • ?
                                • Anonymous
                                • Lkg
                                • 12 Feb 2023

                                Anonymous, 12 Feb 2023"but a 10-bit panel with its 1 billion color gradation... moreMine has 120Hz. I turned it off.
                                Was not any worth.

                                  You can tell just how bad the previous Exynos 2200 SoC is when the new phone scored an extra 18 hours of battery endurance rating. That is a hugely significant improvement. Even having AMD on board for the GPU performance doesn't do enough justice for the Exynos.

                                  As for the 200MP primary camera, I am not a big fan of the overall photo quality. That is an iPhone-grade oversharpening level right there. Heck, the iPhone 14 Pro/Pro Max shows much better photo quality when shoot at 48MP and then downscaled to 12MP. It's the same story when I compared this phone against the 2021 Sony Xperia Pro-I using the Photo Compare tool. The oversharpening effect from this phone's 200MP camera is totally off the scale!

                                    Very interesting about the 126 hr battery rating . So it seems the Gen 2 chip is much more energy efficient. These premium Android makers that are promising 5 years of support are endangering their long term demand. With Oppo ,Samsung and now Oneplus ,consumers can wait till Black Friday and beyond to bag a new handset with significant discount and the nearly new sector on Ebay etc will become evermore tempting. Especially as Oppo and Oneplus are guaranteeing no battery degradation for 1600 charges.

                                      • F
                                      • Frank
                                      • gDf
                                      • 12 Feb 2023

                                      Hello GSM-ARENA-TEAM!

                                      First, a big THANK YOU for all your smartphone-reviews over the past years. They are an extremely useful orientation for users and those interested in buying a new phone - in particular the pictures within the camera-reviews!

                                      Are you aware YOU DO SOMETHING UNIQUE HERE noone else does, at least not as regularly as you?

                                      Certain scenes are most oftenly captured "by default" with every phone and every single camera of a phone you review, each time (or nearly so) from the same perspective and in comparable lighting: the castle with mural and clock, the snail left of Park-Hotel-Vitosha-entrance and it's surrounding, the view from the park towards Baku with Vitosha-Hall and Park-Hotel-Vitosha.
                                      The same applies for certain nighttime-scenes.

                                      This provides AN INVALUABLE OPPORTUNITY TO COMPARE PICTURES not only across different cameras of one phone but ACROSS CAMERAS OF DIFFERENT PHONES over time!

                                      Within certain limitations one can easily compare the fully downloaded pictures, e. g. regarding general 'look and feel', detail, contrast, sharpness, colour-reproduction, noise-level .... even across different devices! I.m.h.o. for the interested reader that can be at least as useful as your photo-compare-tool! Even more so as the development and quality of smartphone-cameras have been and still are advancing rapidly.

                                      UNFORTUNATELY these scenes are almost completely missing in the current Galaxy- S23-Ultra-review, just as much as in former reviews of some top-end-devices, e. g. the Pixel 7 Pro.

                                      Maybe over time it's boring for reviewers to capture the same scene again and again ... but it's precious for the people you do it for!

                                      PLEASE keep capturing these scenes for your reviews on a regular base! And perhaps add them to your current S23-reviews or the coresponding future longterm-reviews?

                                      Have a great time

                                      Frank




                                        • ?
                                        • Anonymous
                                        • Lkg
                                        • 12 Feb 2023

                                        Nick Tegrataker, 12 Feb 2023This is one of the highest-rated phones on GSMArena, and de... moreSince when samsung has well calibrated screen?
                                        They did not even bother to show values.
                                        Phone Arena got delta 2.64 rgbcmy and 7.8 grayscale.
                                        The same Phone Arena got 1.3 and 2.5 from S22u.
                                        Panel is exactly same , but bad calibrated. And being same includes 232Hz pwm.

                                        Not even playing with rgb sliders get rid of warm colours.

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