Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review
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- AcademicBarzo
- nEJ
- 12 Feb 2023
Good review, but yet another which fails to adresss the poor Bluetooth implementation that Samsung is getting away with in their supposedly flagship phones. Despite all the marketing hype around a modified Qualcomm chipset, there is still no sign on Snapdragon sound or apt-x adaptive on the Galaxy phones. This is unacceptable in 2023 - many headphones (B&O, Sennheiser, Bowers & Wilkins, Focal, etc) use aptx-apdative instead of LDAC in their codec support, and the Galaxy series does not support this. I wish reviews would at least comment on this, given that the phones no longer have a headphone jack.
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- Anonymous
- YQZ
- 12 Feb 2023
"but a 10-bit panel with its 1 billion color gradations will be better at displaying smooth color gradients without introducing banding"
How about you guys reviewing these flagships design a test where you display a gradient or color swatch and test how smooth the 10 bit displays are? I am sure you guys were claiming about how good 120hz is even when the readers won't be able to experience the difference from the review.
- T
- The Fourth Hokage
- CbF
- 12 Feb 2023
All these so called modern cameraphone bragging about numbers, tdchnology, advanced software and hardware with a $1000+ price tag and coould not capture a natural looking picture with true to life colours specially the sky , most of them portarits the sky like a blue tarpoline.
- S
- SteveUk
- mpF
- 12 Feb 2023
unxpctd, 12 Feb 2023I'm not impressed with this phone at all. Samsung is n... moreThey've improved the chip, the battery life and the camera... what more do you want? The S22U was already pretty perfect.
And actually, no - Samsung don't use this design on their cheaper models... it's only for the Ultra.
- J
- Johnny Romania
- ajW
- 12 Feb 2023
Wow first comment on the S23 Ultra's page. And I really took my time to read the review and eat :)) so I could have been even way quicker.
This phone was so expected with it's 200 MP sensor (wich ar first I was 100% sure will be a big fuss, but after I started to see every reviewer become so excited, I kind of started too :))). WHAT A DISSAPPONTMENT. Good thing they all come with SD 8 Gen 2, but except for this, there is absolutely nothing exciting, NOTHING.
5 minutes faster charging and 1 hour better battery life ? For real ? :)) And don't get me started with this whole reviewer battery screen on time shit in very specific use cases like leaving the phone to play video on youtube for 8 hours and doing nothing else.
If I take the s23 ultra for a ride on mobile data with 1 hour live location Google Maps, 1 hour Google Chrome jumping from page to page to page to page, 1 hour of Flashscore jumping from game to game to game to game too see stats and H2H, and texting on whatsapp in between all these actions. Your phone is gone whichever one it may be.
- N
- Nick Tegrataker
- Xpf
- 12 Feb 2023
Anonymous, 11 Feb 2023" We're getting more vivid colors overall with a ... moreI will say this in defence of Samsung - Having a tendency to skew and saturate specific colours isn't "offense to the act of photography", that's just the photographic style that Samsung decided to go with. It's like how Canon is known for vibrant SOOC JPEGs and Fuji is for subdued colours with a lot of hue shifts that resemble what film cameras capture.
Although I must also mention that it's a bit disappointing that Samsung still doesn't have a comparable colour reproduction mode to Vivo's Zeiss Natural Colour or Xiaomi's Leica Authentic mode, both of which allow for more neutral-looking colours with a lot more nuance and the leeway to tune them afterwards. Not to mention, sharpening on the S23 series is still cranked up way too high for the 12.5MP mode in good light.
- N
- Nick Tegrataker
- Xpf
- 12 Feb 2023
Ivo., 12 Feb 2023Huge improvement in camera resolution/pixel binning/noise w... morePlease tell me you're trolling without telling me you're trolling..
- N
- Nick Tegrataker
- Xpf
- 12 Feb 2023
This is one of the highest-rated phones on GSMArena, and deservedly so - There really aren't many obvious flaws for me to point out on this phone. A bright and colour-accurate display, excellent battery life, flagship-grade performance, good speakers and *finally* an acceptably decent set of cameras regardless of whether shooting photos or videos.. full of nice stuff.
With that said, I wish you guys included some of its notable shortcomings in the "cons" category at the end of the review: Oversharpening in 12.5MP photos is very obvious during the day, the 200MP mode is rather pointless, and (as even pointed out in the article) it still uses an 8-bit display panel. But otherwise one isn't going to be missing much by getting S23 Ultra, and I can openly recommend people to buy it despite the increased price from the last year. Well done Samsung.
- K
- Kingmaker
- U@y
- 12 Feb 2023
Wow! Will henceforth take ALL gsmarena reviews with a pinch of salt. They seen to have been sponsored by Scamsung. This is NOT a perfect phone by any means of the imagination.
A few cons, last-gen or mediocre ultra wide, periscope cameras. A really unweildy design, impossible to use with one hand. Extremely subdued haptic motors, it's 2 steps down from what the S21U had. The border aluminium from recycled metal feels cheap. And these are all from the top of my head, could list more if delving deeper.
No honest outlet left out there anymore.
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- Anonymous
- XND
- 12 Feb 2023
First time I see that gsmarena doesn't added a single cons in their review...gsmarena gives S23 ultra highest rating ever.
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- Anonymous
- Kxv
- 12 Feb 2023
The processing of the 12MP images looks overdone but the 50 MP images look very detailed and more natural.
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- Anonymous
- XND
- 12 Feb 2023
This is the highest rated phone by gsmarena ever..
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- Anonymous
- Kxv
- 12 Feb 2023
unxpctd, 12 Feb 2023I'm not impressed with this phone at all. Samsung is n... moreThe sensor outputs 12 MP AND 50 MP images. Want higher resolution? Choose 50 MP.
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- unxpctd
- kq{
- 12 Feb 2023
I'm not impressed with this phone at all. Samsung is now a boring company, nothing to see, move along. Seriously, what is there to get excited over? The 200 megapixel sensor that still outputs only 12 megapixel images? The same design that they've not only been reusing but filtering down to their cheap models too? Outside of the pen, there's no gimmicks or new things at all, it's literally "Last year's phone, now with the new Snapdragon!" Wow, such innovation, so excite.
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- Anonymous
- sR1
- 12 Feb 2023
Why is the main lens so wide, if it already has an Ultrawide? S22U camera is very distortion, and the latest update still does not fix it on my phones.
- S
- Saran
- P5m
- 12 Feb 2023
Excellent, well detailed review. The word ' Highly recommend ' is an emotion. Great work.
- z
- zillion
- Ki8
- 12 Feb 2023
With all the best photography capabilities by this phone, the only cons is the same cameras placement with s22u. I don't know what happened with samsung designer lately. Maybe they are too confident to reuse this style just like apple did.