The Galaxy S23 Ultra is Samsung’s latest and greatest power-house smartphone with a more impressive chip, battery and camera than its predecessors. But do the improvements justify such a steep price?
At £1,249 ($1,199/A$1,949), which is £100 more than last year’s model, it is one of the most expensive non-folding smartphones available.
The S23 Ultra is the spitting image of its predecessor, an extremely solid and premium-feeling device and looks really good in cream, as pictured. It has the same super-bright and crisp screen, same aluminium frame and slightly less curved glass at the edges.
One of the S23 Ultra’s unrivalled features is the fan-favourite S Pen stylus, which was added to the S series last year and receives only minor changes. It is a similar story for the software, with the phone running Samsung’s One UI 5.1, which is based on Android 13. It is packed with useful features, including productivity tools for the S Pen, and more customisation options for the lockscreen.
The new phone will receive at least five years of software updates from release, including four major Android version updates and monthly security patches. Samsung has dramatically improved the speed and availability of updates for older devices over the past couple of years, which means most of its top line of phones made in the past few years are already running One UI 5.1.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 now worldwide
Unusually for Samsung, all Galaxy S23 models use the same top Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip from Qualcomm regardless of where they are sold. In the past, most regions, including the UK and Europe, used Samsung’s own slightly weaker chips, while the US used Qualcomm’s.
The new chip is therefore a bigger deal to consumers in Europe, not only boosting general and gaming performance by up to 35% but running much more efficiently, staying cooler under heavy workloads and extending battery life considerably.
The S23 Ultra lasts more than 52 hours between charges, making it one of the longest-lasting smartphones I’ve tested alongside Apple’s iPhone 14 Plus. That was with the screen actively used for more than six hours and at least an hour spent on 5G a day, the rest of the time on wifi. Heavy gaming sessions reduced the battery life, but the phone survived even the heaviest days of general usage with about 30% left in the tank.
I have no doubt almost three-day battery life is possible with more frugal use. Turning off the always-on display adds roughly 10% to the battery life.
Specifications
Main screen: 6.8in QHD+ Dynamic Amoled 2X (500ppi) 120Hz
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
RAM: 8 or 12GB
Storage: 256, 512GB or 1TB
Operating system: One UI 5.1 based on Android 13
Camera: Quad rear: 200MP, 12MP ultra-wide, 10MP 3x and 10x telephoto; 12MP front-facing
Connectivity: 5G, USB-C, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, UWB and GNSS
Water resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 mins)
Dimensions: 163.4 x 78.1 x 8.9mm
Weight: 233g
Sustainability
Samsung does not provide an expected lifespan for the battery but it should last in excess of 500 full-charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity.
The phone is generally repairable. Screen repairs cost about £260, while the battery is replaceable by authorised service centres. Samsung offers a self-repair programme in the US, but not in the EU or UK. The phone scores up to 6 out of 10 on iFixit’s repairability ranking.
It contains recycled material in 12 components – double last year’s number – including aluminium, glass and plastic. Samsung offers trade-in and recycling schemes for old devices. The company publishes annual sustainability reports but not impact assessments for individual products.
Camera
There are four cameras on the back of the phone and a good 12-megapixel selfie camera at the top of the screen.
As with the previous two Ultra generations, the four-camera array includes 3x and 10x optical zoom telephoto 10MP modules, which are excellent and allow a far greater range of zoom than any rival. Images up to 30x zoom look as good as most other phones manage at less than 10x. The 12MP ultrawide produces excellent landscape and architecture shots and is used for Samsung’s very good macrophotography mode when up close.
New for this year is a 200MP main camera, which uses the first of a new generation of sensors with just under double the pixel count of previous models. By default it uses the data from all the pixels to increase captured light and detail, producing 12MP images that are some of the very best available across a range of light levels. The phone can also shoot at 50MP or the full 200MP, the latter producing huge image files with an amazing amount of detail in bright light. They lack the dynamic range of 12MP shots, however, as they lose some of the advanced processing.
Low-light mode is slightly better overall and produces generally well exposed images, though is needed less as the camera gathers more light to start with. The camera app is packed with advanced and fun features, including a full RAW shooting experience for those looking to do their own editing and the most capable video on Android.
Samsung’s portrait photography, particularly at its 3x zoom, is class-leading on natural look and fine details such as flyaway hairs.
Compared with the S21 and S22 Ultra from the last two years, the S23 Ultra offers only incremental upgrades across the entire camera system. But that has kept it the most capable camera on any smartphone available, and is about the only one I would consider to be able to replace the utility of a dSLR or equivalent with its full range of optical zoom.
Price
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra costs from £1,249 ($1,199.99/A$1,949) with 256GB of storage.
For comparison, the Galaxy S23 costs £849, the S23+ costs £1,049, the Z Fold 4 costs £1,649, the Google Pixel 7 Pro costs £749 and the iPhone 14 Pro costs £1,099.
Verdict
If ever there was a phone worthy of the “ultra” moniker, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is it.
The phone is unrivalled in size, power, capability and battery life on Android, while its camera is more capable than any other on the market. It is very much overkill for most, but for those who would like the ability to do more or less anything with a phone, the S23 Ultra has the goods.
It is full of little improvements to almost every aspect. However, it only builds on big leaps made two years ago and is overshadowed by more innovative folding devices. Its very high price makes it poor value next to the Google Pixel 7 Pro, which cannot match the Samsung on every element but comes close enough for £400-£500 less.
It is without doubt the best Android phone available. Whether that’s enough to be a hit at this price any more, I’m not sure.
Pros: very big 120Hz screen, brilliantly capable camera with 3x and 10x optical zoom, good software with five years support, faster fingerprint scanner, S Pen stylus, top performance, very long battery life, contains recycled materials.
Cons: huge, heavy, extremely expensive, S Pen may be superfluous feature for many.
