Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Full Review

Samsung has proven itself to be innovative, progressive, and top of the game in the smartphone market again and again in the past. When Samsung also made the “Note” and “J” series they used to rule the market of budget-friendly phones to High range phones. And Now with the S23 lineup, they have brought us a new generation chipset, a better camera sensor, and more proving they are still on top of the game. Here we will discuss the S23 Ultra Full Review of the Samsung Galaxy line.

Specifications for S23 Ultra Full review

Inside The Box

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra comes in a very small box adopting the style of Apple’s strategy on the iPhone, Samsung Mobiles has also stopped shipping chargers inside the box. They claim they are doing this to reduce to use of plastic and other resources and people already have a charger from their previous phones. Inside the box, we can find a few documents, a USB Type C Charger, and a sim ejector tool. As the box is really small and it has very few things, the unboxing experience is also very simple and nothing exciting.

Look and Feel

Even though the phone comes with all glass front and back, the phone is not slippery and we can get that comfortable grip. Aluminum frames come in a boxy shape helping us to make a steady grip which is really important looking at the phone’s size. The camera bump on the back of the phone is big enough to make the phone wiggle when we use it while putting it on the table as the phone doesn’t sit flat.

The lock/power button is in a perfect location where my thumb naturally rests which helps to prevent the problems like taking screenshots mistakenly with the power and volume down buttons which I have faced in other phones. Even though the phone is really big and boxy, the phone easily fits in the pockets when on the move. So, the overall look and feel of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra are really good.

Screen and Display

The screen of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is basically perfect. The screen is same as the last year’s S22 Ultra except for the protection, this year’s S23 Ultra comes with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection. The screen is crystal clear and sharp with very low to almost no bezel on the sides because of the curve screen.

There is a little bezel on top and bottom of the screen but they are so thin that they never bothered me or ruin my media consumption experience. Watching movies on this screen feels really good. Because of high nits brightness, the screen is visible and clear even directly under bright day sunlight.

The screen is not just super bright, but the brightness also goes really low which comes really handy when used at night time with lights off. Because of my habit of using phones late at night while watching movies or YouTube videos, low brightness is important for me to not harm my eyes and this phone does that really well.

Performance

The performance of the S23 Ultra has increased significantly as these Qualcomm chipsets in the S23 lineup are designed primarily for Samsung galaxy S23 phones, “Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy”. This chip has increased primary clock speed from 3.2GHz to 3.36GHz and an increased GPU clock speed from 680MHz to 719MHz making Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra noticeably faster that its competition.

While testing on Geekbench 6, S23 scored 2024 on Single-Core & 5207 on Multi-Core CPU, and scored 9126 on GPU. In AnTuTu S23 Ultra Scored 1238675 and while throttling testing for 15 minutes, the phone scored 326,765 GIPS on average and 358,296 GIPS as the highest score.

Almost all kinds of apps such as native applications, web-based applications, and hybrid applications open without delay on the S23 Ultra. A hybrid application is a software app that combines elements of both native and web applications. Hybrid apps are essentially web apps that have a native app shell. And S23 handles those types of applications like a charm. While working on multiple apps, background apps don’t stop working and load from the beginning. I was always able to open apps and continue from where I left even if I was going back to that app after an hour.

As S23 Ultra’s chip has gotten better it has also enhanced the gaming performance making the gaming experience smoother in this phone. Games like PUBG Mobile, CoD Mobile, and Genshin Impact give really smooth experience even in the highest available settings. In Genshin Impact, there were a few refresh rate drops but it was not problematic and didn’t affect my overall gaming experience. But holding the phone in landscape mode while gaming may not be exactly a comforting grip for people who have small hands but it was not a problem for me.

OS and Software

S23 Ultra ships with Android 13 Out of the box with One UI 5.1 with the last update of January 1st. While I was testing S23 Ultra, I received an update of February 1st of 2023. This latest update came with a stability of performance and more security features but more importantly update also unlocked features like pro video mode in the default camera app which was locked in the previous update of January 1st. S23 will receive updates of up to 4 years that can receive OS versions up to android 17.

UI/UX in One UI 5.1 is as smooth as its predecessors as this update included a few minor tweaks that are not noticeable to normal users but inside the shell, the improvements make it better than the previous version. While using it, I found it to be as expected and the UI is simple and effective.

For security, the phone has all the basic features such as fingerprint lock, face lock, pattern, pin, password, and more. Face and fingerprint unlock are not the fastest one on the market but it opens really fast.

Camera

The OSI in the camera has been improved from the last year’s S22 Ultra making the video & photography experience in S23 Ultra even better. As the improvement is almost double in the range of OSI, images are slightly better in every way. Photos in 200 MP are really sharp and have details. There is little shutter lag while taking pictures but after the picture is taken they have high color accuracy and don’t disappoint.

Videography is even fun on the S23 ultra as now it supports 8K video recording in 30 FPS but we cannot turn on stabilization while recording in 8K. In my experience, I found that as 8K videos were rendered in the background while recording, there was a slight jump from frame to frame while recording that looked like a drop in frame rate but the video was smooth and there was no frame drop while watching that same video.

Taking handheld videos in QHD 60 FPS with super steady mode takes really steady videos that make you feel like the video was taken using a gimbal. But when taking videos with super steady mode on, it required very good lighting conditions as the lighting drops even slightly the video becomes grainy and noisy but in good lighting, condition videos are crystal clear and sharp.

In the front camera, the megapixel sensor has dropped to 12 MP in the s23 Ultra from 40MP on S22 Ultra but the images taken with the s23 front camera are better than S22 Ultra. With a front camera too, we can take videos up to 4K in 60FPS and videos are really sharp and detailed as expected.

Sound & Speakers

The earpiece on the top of the phone doubles down as the loudspeaker making speakers in the S23 Ultra stereo speakers. The stereo speakers on S23 Ultra are really loud which gives surround effect and experience while playing games, listening to 3D music, or even watching movies. As already known S23 Ultra doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack, if you want t listen and connect to a phone with wired earphones, you will have to use one with USB Type-C.

Battery

This huge 5000 mAh battery is more than enough to last me through the whole day. I was using social media, news, Twitter, taking videos in 8K, taking photos, playing games, watching YouTube videos, and more on a single charge the whole day and even the phone had about 15% charge left before I went to sleep and repeat it all over again the next day.

On casual and light use of the S23 Ultra, it will last up to 2 days easily and can be dragged up to the 3rd day. Casual use includes using the phone only for calls, checking messages & emails, and using social media here and there sometimes.

And talking about the charging time, with 45 Watt wired charging, the S23 Ultra charges from 0 to 30% in just 15 min and goes around 65% in just 30 min, and to fully charge to 100% it took Samsung s23 Ultra around 1 hour. I also used my 15 Watt charging brick from Samsung and it took around 2 hours to fully charge from 0 to 100%.

Price

Extra

S-Pen that comes with S23 Ultra is really useful and has hidden features that normal users may not see as advantages. S-Pen can be used to take hand-free images with groups, zoom in and out, switch modes, and cameras from rear to front and more. Not just in camera, the S-Pen can be used to control the whole phone too.

100x zoom is also something that the ‘Samsung Galaxy S Ultra phones’ are known for nowadays. 100x zoom came in really handy when I was trying to take a quick picture of objects far away for quick information and the moon photos that I tried to take were also spotlight and conversation-worthy when I was among my friends or family groups.

Verdict

S23 Ultra is a beast of a phone that can do it all without any hesitation and while using this phone I almost never faced any issues. Because of the updates, the phone will be like the new phone for 4 years and it may look like a stretch but I can see this phone performing well for up to 8 to 10 years. I would definitely suggest this phone to someone who is looking for an all-rounder phone that runs smoothly like butter and wants to live without having to worry if their phone will crash or hang.