Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

This is Samsung’s ultimate flagship- the Galaxy  S22 ultra, and unlike the rest of this year’s  S series, it brings a design and features  which are more like a Galaxy Note phone.

The most obvious of these is the improved stylus  support, but there’s a lot more to this phone than that.I’m Will for GSM Arena and let’s see what  the S22 Ultra has to offer in our full review.

The galaxy S22 ultra brings a design that’s quite  different from the rest of the S series.It’s larger and heftier, and its cameras come straight  out of the back, rather than being mounted in a camera bump.

Plus the ultra has a flat back,  top and bottom, quite like a galaxy Note device. Another big change over last  year’s model is that the S22 ultra integrates the stylus into the design,  with a dedicated dock at the bottom.

It’s a lot more secure, and it means  you always have your pen with you- unlike the S21 Ultra where  you’d need to keep it elsewhere.Don’t worry about the dock- the phone  has full ip68 rated ingress protection. Plus it’s overall quite durable with gorilla  glass victus plus on the back and the front. 

As you can see, the S22 ultra is a lot less like  a Galaxy S phone and more like a Galaxy Note- and since that lineup is discontinued  now, this is the spiritual successor. And while the stylus is the same  as saw in the last generation, the tech supporting it has been upgraded here. 

The S22 ultra’s AI can even better anticipate your movements, reducing the latency of  the pen from 9 milliseconds to less than 3. So taking notes is a bit more responsive. And the  function for converting your handwriting into text has been improved to be even more accurate.

Adding media to your notes is nothing new. But now, you can add a snapshot of  a whole web page, if you want to.The function doesn’t work  that well in Europe though, since websites need to ask for permissions- and  these sorts of popups end up in your notes too. Alright let’s move on to some other  features- like the display itself.  

It’s a 6.8 inch AMOLED with a QHD  resolution and a fast 120Hz refresh rate. This display is curved at the edges,  wrapping around to meet the frame. It creates a neat effect, but some people would  prefer a flat screen like on the other S22 phones. 

The 120hz refresh rate means that swiping and  scrolling on screen looks much smoother.The refresh rate is adaptive - with static content,  the UI rendering can go as low as 24Hz and as low as 1fps to save energy, and it will also  adjust to match other content on screen. The display is awesome. With its high resolution,  content looks quite sharp, and you also get great contrast and deep blacks thanks to the  OLED tech. There’s HDR 10 plus support, and colors can be super accurate, depending  on the profile you choose in color settings.

The S22 ultra also has class leading max  brightness. With the manual slider, you can achieve 500 nits, and that boosts up to around  830 nits if you enable the extra brightness mode. But that’s not all. Enabling auto  brightness mode gets you an even bigger boost- we measured a maximum over  12 hundred and 50 nits- pretty crazy stuff.

In addition to that, when auto brightness  mode is on, a new feature called vision booster will also adjust the contrast  of the screen based on ambient light, to make legibility out in the sun even better. And under the screen sits an ultrasonic fingerprint reader. It’s quite fast and  responsive to wake up and unlock the phone. 

For audio, the S22 ultra has a pair of stereo  speakers, with the earpiece acting as the second one. The speakers earned a score  of good on our loudness charts, but are a bit quieter than last year’s model, and we’ve  also heard better low end in the competition. 

Storage isn’t expandable here via micro SD, but you can opt for up to a terabyte  of space onboard, if you need it! The interface of the S22 ultra is Samsung’s  OneUI 4.1, based on android 12. Besides the features that are based on the stylus, it’s  the same UI you’d get on the S22 and S22 plus. 

Of course, one important aspect to keep  in mind is Samsung software support. They promise 4 generations of Android and  OneUI updates, and 5 years of security updates.The interface also brings a few new features, like  additional functionality and support for widgets. 

Android 12 allows you to change  the color of your system menus and even your icons to match your wallpaper. And there’s a dedicated privacy dashboard, which organizes all of your privacy and permissions options into one easy to reach spot.

Under the hood of the S22 ultra is either  an Exynos 2200 chipset, for some markets, or a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, for others. Both  are based on a 4nm process, and are comparable, but the Exynos variant has a GPU that  was designed in collaboration with AMD. 

We have an Exynos model, and performance  here is great, as you’d expect from a high end flagship. It’s more than enough  to multitask and play heavy games without a hitch.  

Plus the thermal management is quite reasonable  here. Of course the previous generation is tough to beat, and in benchmarks the improvements  compared to the S21 ultra are modest. Powering the S22 ultra is a 5000mAh battery,  like last year’s model, but battery life scores are a little less this time around, with an  endurance rating of 108 hours in our tests.  

Still that’s not too shabby. Charging is a bit complicated though. The S22 ultra supports up to 45 watt fast  charging, but when using such an adapter we weren’t able to charge the phone  meaningfully faster than with a 25 watt one. There will be a new 45W charger coming from  Samsung, but based on the specs and info so far, we don’t expect charging speed  will be any different with it.

Now we have the cameras: a 108MP main cam, a  10MP telephoto with OIS and 3x optical zoom, a 10MP periscope with 10x optical  zoom, and a 12MP ultra wide.

The setup is almost exactly  the same as last year's, except that the telephoto cameras have different  sensors with smaller pixels, for some reason. Anyway, let’s start off with photo quality from  the main cam. Its 12MP shots are good, but don’t blow us away. There’s plenty of detail, accurate  exposure and lively colors and the dynamic  range isn’t as wide as we expect from a flagship. 

The ultra wide cam delivers sharp and detailed  images which have wide dynamic range.  There does seem to be some  graininess and extra sharpening here. At 3 times zoom, we see a good level  of detail, wide enough dynamic range, and colors that match the other cameras well.  And actually, these zoomed shots are pretty noise free- cleaner than last year’s even. Portrait mode on the S22 ultra delivers great results. You can shoot portraits with  either the main or the 3 times telephoto, and you get excellent subject separation as well  as a very natural looking defocused background. 

Photos from the 10 times telephoto  have respectable detail levels, and good contrast and colors. If you’re shooting in auto mode in low light,  the S22 ultra will automatically apply night mode processing. These photos from the main  cam are impressive, with an excellent level of detail and well preserved colors. You also get  nicely contained highlights and developed shadows. 

You can also toggle a dedicated night mode,  which dials up this processing even further The result  is that lighting looks brighter and warmer, and  there’s heavier sharpening and reduced noise.

The effect on dynamic range is pretty minimal.The ultra wide cam will also use the auto night mode in dark situations,and these shots  are pretty good. They have very good detail,wide dynamic range, and lively colors.  There is some visible noise though.

Turning on the full night  mode cleans up that noise, and it brightens up and restores  the detail in the shadows. Shooting with the 3 times telephoto with  the auto night mode applied will produce decent images, but they are on the soft side. Here toggling the full night mode is well  worth it. The picture is significantly  sharper, and shadows get a nice boost. At 10 times zoom, with auto night  mode on the photos look okay,  but are soft and have some patches of noise. The dedicated night mode makes a big difference,  improving the sharpness, the noise  levels, and detail in the shadows. 

Selfies are taken with a 40MP front  facing cam, but come out in 10MP.  These are superb, with plenty of detail,  accurate colors, and wide dynamic range.  Plus the camera has auto focus, so  your selfies will come out sharp. 

The S22 ultra can record video in up  to 4K at 60fps with all of its cameras, as well as 8K at 24fps with the main one. Starting off with 4K video from the main cam, you see a very good amount of detail,  accurate colors and excellent dynamic range. 8K looks good on a specs sheet, but there isn’t  noticeably more detail here than with the 4K footage. Plus it’s softer, with some visible  artifacts, and the clips take up a lot more space. 

4K video from the ultra wide cam is  detailed, with wide dynamic range. The colors are a bit warmer than  those you get from the main cam. 3 times zoomed footage is sharped and detailed,  with excellent dynamic range and spot on colors. There is some visible noise here though. 4K video quality from the 10 times telephoto isn’t mind blowing, but it is respectable,  especially for this sort of camera. 

There’s electronic stabilization available  on all of the cameras and resolutions, and it does a decent job, though we did  notice some over correction when panning. There’s also a super steady mode which smooths  things out even further, but only in 1080p. At night, the S22 ultra can record  relatively good videos, with  its main cam The detail here is better than last year’s model. Colors are well preserved too.  

The dynamic range isn’t the widest though,  with both clipped highlights and dark shadows. The ultra wide doesn’t do as well, and its  videos come out underexposed and soft. In a similar fashion, the telephoto  cameras struggle at night. The 3 times zoomed clips are more  usable than the 10 times ones though. 

So, that’s the Galaxy S22 Ultra. After Samsung  skipped releasing a Note phone last year,  and then discontinued the Notes altogether,  this is what they’ve come up with. It brings the latest flagship features, like the cutting edge AMOLED display and top notch chip set,plus the killer cameras, but on top of that there’s the extra responsive and dock able stylus.

So at the end of the day, if you’re  looking for the features and form factor of a Galaxy Note phone, in a new  device with the latest software support, the S22 ultra is worth recommending.