A very important phone is the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. It’s Samsung’s best smartphone that looks like a regular phone. It comes out early each year and sets the standard for the rest of Samsung’s devices and most of the smartphone market. This phone has always had Samsung’s best display, best cameras, and fastest chip. It is also where most of the company’s software development began.
We say “traditionally” because the Galaxy Z Fold, which is now in its fourth generation, has changed its focus in a not-so-subtle way. The Galaxy Z Fold4 has the biggest screen of any Samsung flagship, and it’s also where most of Samsung’s software innovations can be seen. But some things haven’t changed. The Galaxy S22 Ultra is Samsung’s best phone with a camera. The same is true for high-quality construction and long battery life. On the surface, the Galaxy S22 Ultra is not much different from the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
The new phone has the Note’s simple and, to me, boring design, as well as a built-in S Pen. The good news is that Samsung kept what made the Galaxy S21 Ultra so great. The 5,000mAh battery wasn’t lowered to make room for the pen, and the phone still has a great screen and great cameras. Aside from small changes to the software and sensors, these cameras are mostly the same. And that seems to be the plan for 2023, if it’s not broken and all.
With the Galaxy S22 Ultra, Samsung just raised the bar for screen quality. As before, you get a refresh rate of 120Hz, which made scrolling smooth during our hands-on time. The touch sampling rate is 240Hz, which gamers should like. But there are two big improvements to the display here. The first is that the screen can get as bright as 1,750 nits, which could be the brightest we’ve ever seen. Standard brightness is 1,250 nits, which is still quite high.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra has a big 5,000mAh battery and wireless charging, just like the Galaxy S21 Ultra. In our tests, the battery lasted about a full day of varied use, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., but not much longer (this was the same for mid-range and high-resolution screen settings). We were a little surprised that a battery this big didn’t last for a day and a half. Maybe the new 4nm chip isn’t as good as Samsung hoped it would be.