The Galaxy S23 Ultra may look almost the same as its predecessor, but it packs a lot more horsepower under the hood. In the practical test, however, the 200-megapixel camera is particularly impressive, which is not groundbreaking, but sets the bar a little higher in the luxury class.
If a manufacturer doesn't bring a completely new device onto the market, people often think of it as boring. That's definitely the case with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, because it feels like you're holding last year's model in your hands. However, Samsung's new flagship is not that boring, which is mainly due to its spectacular new main camera, which has a resolution of up to 200 megapixels (MP). Basically, if you like maximum performance, you will love the Galaxy S23 Ultra.
You really don't have to spend long with the design, because apart from the less curved sides of the display and the slightly more conspicuous lens rings on the back, everything has stayed the same. The screen, which is now flat almost to the edge, is more practical for using the S Pen, which is also unchanged at the bottom left of the frame. In addition, content is now less likely to be curved. Fits.
The AMOLED screen is still 6.8 inches and the device is still relatively handy and light for its size at 163.4 x 78.1 x 8.9 millimeters and around 233 grams. The screen itself is a splendour, with a sharp pixel density of around 500ppi, crisp contrasts and bright but natural colours. As before, it has an adaptive refresh rate of 1 to 120 Hertz. The display is protected by the latest Gorilla Glass Victus 2, which is said to be particularly scratch-resistant.
The inner workings are more remarkable. Because in the Galaxy S23 Ultra, a version of Qualcomm's current top chip Snapdragon 8 of the second generation, specially "cooked" for Samsung, is at work. An Exynos chip from our own house will not be used this year.
The benchmark results of the new flagship are impressive. In Geekbench 5, for example, the test device scored 1541 points with one core and 4968 with all eight. This means that the S23 Ultra is now the most powerful Android smartphone and leaves its predecessor far behind, which scored almost 1200 and 300 points. The iPhone 14 Pro with the A16 was a bit better in Geekbench 5 with around 1870 and 5380 points.
In the 3D Mark "Wild Life Extreme" benchmark, the new Samsung flagship not only did very well with 3808 points, it even surpassed Apple's opponent, who only got 3360 points. The Samsung bolide was also able to win the comparison of the average refresh rate achieved with 22.8 to 20.1 frames per second (fps).
However, benchmark comparisons should always be treated with caution. Occasionally it even happens that manufacturers specially optimize the settings for the muscle games. In everyday life, the balance of power can be different. And: All of the top chips of recent times are so strong that differences in performance play a much smaller role than they used to.
The fact that the Galaxy S23 Ultra can be operated extremely quickly is due not only to an apparently perfect coordination, but also to the flash memory used, which has the new and fastest standard with UFS-4.0. The same applies to the 8 or 12 gigabytes (GB) of LPDDR5X RAM.
With 5000 milliampere hours (mAh), the battery has the same capacity as the battery of the predecessor. Surprisingly, the stronger newcomer seems to use up less despite his many muscles. Even at the end of an intensive test day, the Galaxy S23 Ultra still had reserves to last until the next noon if necessary.
As impressive as its performance is, the highlight of the new Samsung flagship is the 200 MP main camera. The two 10 MP telephoto cameras with 3x and 10x optical magnification and the 12 MP ultra wide-angle camera also do a great job. However, your results are about the same high level as the previous model.
The main camera already takes very nice pictures with great contrasts and colors in automatic mode during the day. However, they then only have 12 instead of 200 megapixels, since Samsung combines 16 instead of the usual four pixels into one large pixel. Above all, this improves the sensitivity to light, which can be saved during the day.
If you set the settings to 50 or even 200 MP, you get photos with much more detail, which can be seen in fine structures in particular. With 200 MP recordings, you can also crop out smaller areas of the image without any noticeable loss of quality.
The so-called pixel binning really pays off in the dark and in difficult, mixed lighting conditions. Then the camera shines with photos whose dark and light areas are perfectly exposed and have a comparatively large number of details for night shots.
The technology also helps the camera to achieve very fast autofocus, which also benefits videos. In addition, improved optical image stabilization forgives even more hectic movements than before, and those who want can now record 8K videos at 30 fps. However, 4K clips with 60 fps look smoother and therefore better.
The front camera shows that many pixels are not always better. Even without pixel binning, it only has 12 instead of 40 MP. But you don't really see a difference.
Overall, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is a strong upgrade. Samsung has upped the ante almost everywhere when it comes to performance, especially the main camera. However, the differences are not so noticeable in everyday life that users of one of the three previous Ultras would have to switch to the new flagship. But the device is simply too expensive at at least 1400 euros. Samsung grants three major Android updates and four years of security updates for devices released in 2019, and one year more for devices released later. So you can take your time for an upgrade.
