Why the S23 Ultra COULD Beat the iPhone!

Thanks to one BIG upgrade

I wasn’t angry with the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra last year.

I was just very disappointed.

As an iPhone user who was used to consistently buttery smooth operation with every new iteration, the S22 Ultra was an expensive mess.

This was because the UK version was saddled with Samsung’s Exynos chip, which was utterly dreadful. It resulted in a device that stuttered, paused, and fumbled its way through even the simplest of tasks.

This left the S23 Ultra with an unenviable task of its own: impress a UK iPhone owner who felt utterly conned by Samsung with the last version.

I have some good news. The S23 Ultra is absolutely brilliant, and I think it can teach the iPhone a thing or two.

What I like about the S23 Ultra

Let’s start with the performance — although, if you’re based in a region such as the United States, you’ll wonder why I’m getting quite so wet-trousered about it all.

It’s simple — in the UK, that Eynos chip was a disaster. I’ll never understand Samsung’s reasoning behind purposefully downgrading the version we received over here, but I’m happy to report that it is a thing of the past. No matter where you buy your S23 Ultra, it’ll have the full-fat Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip inside.

So this is what a flagship S-series Samsung smartphone is supposed to feel like! With that Snapdragon powering One UI, it is iPhone-smooth and a joy to use. There’s not much more to say about the performance, other than — thank you, Samsung (although this took way too long).

I’m also a fan of Samsung’s generous approach to trade-ins and upgrades. The S23 Ultra remains an expensive phone, but the £1,249 starting price for the 256GB version (with 8GB of RAM) can be easily watered down with a tasty trade-in for any device. Samsung will give you up to £600 for your old phone and even upgrade you to the 512GB version (with 12GB of RAM) for ‘free’. As a result, my S23 Ultra set me back just £649.

The display on the S23 Ultra remains one of — if not the — best on the market. Super bright, sharp, and pleasantly saturated, it’s a feast for the eyes. I just wish there was a True Tone equivalent.

Special mention must also go to the battery performance which is epic. The S23 Ultra feels as though it has far more stamina than my iPhone 14 Pro Max — particularly on stand-by. At the time of writing, it has lasted two days and has 29% battery remaining.

This thing also takes some wonderful photos which are detailed (thanks to the 200MP sensor which, by default, produces a binned 12MP image), balanced, and almost Pixel-like.

The selfie camera feels much better than the previous generation, too — particularly in low-light conditions.

It’s not all roses, though.

What I don’t like about the S23 Ultra

With the performance issues of previous generations fixed, the spotlight does of course swing to the remaining negative aspects of the S23 Ultra.

Thankfully, there aren’t many, and only one of them will be a deal-breaker for some users. So, we’ll start there, and it is, as you may have heard, the shutter lag issue.

The S23 Ultra, like its predecessor, just isn’t quick enough to the draw when attempting to capture fast-moving objects. There’s a perceptible delay when tapping the shutter button, leaving the captured scene a fraction of a second behind what you were expecting. This doesn’t matter when you’re shooting landscapes or anything that isn’t a child or a dog, but if you want to take lots of photos of the latter, the S23 Ultra is still a tricky phone to recommend.

On the subject of the camera, there’s also an infinitely irritating quirk which annoyed me constantly during a trip to the Lake District. When you double-tap the power button to enter the camera app, take a photo and review the photo, you’re always thrown back to the lock screen after that. This isn’t particularly helpful when you want to carry on taking photos.

On the subject of the camera, as nice as it might be for Samsung’s marketing team to be able to reference a 100X zoom, it is useless 99.9% of the time; the images look like water paintings undertaken by yours truly (I can’t paint).

You can get some great results with 3X and 10X, but 30X needs a seriously steady hand. Sometimes, too much really can be too much — particularly where the camera is concerned.

I’ve also experienced some inconsistency with Google Pay working on certain Chip and Pin machines, and the sheer amount of Samsung-branded bloatware installed on the device by default remains an absolute pain to sift through and remove.

Is the S23 Ultra an iPhone beater?

Yes.

Those trade-in deals alone make it an incredibly tempting proposition for anyone who has been waiting to upgrade to one of the latest flagships. If you’re not welded into the Apple ecosystem, the S23 Ultra is actually a bit of a no-brainer.

The S Pen, as gimmicky as it might be, does have some utility for hand-written note-takers and remains interesting enough to be a differentiator. The battery performance, display, and performance are also top-notch. It’s a phone you grow to love very quickly.

I’ll be spending more time with the S23 Ultra over the next few weeks, but I’m mightily impressed thus far. Samsung is back in the game — finally.

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Originally published at https://markellisreviews.com on February 13, 2023.