In Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event of 2022, which took place on February 9th, Samsung introduced a new range of devices. These devices include the Galaxy S22 series, which is Samsung's flagship smartphone line, and the Galaxy S8 Series, which is Samsung's flagship tablet line. But one device in particular was rather quite interesting, the S22 Ultra.
With the release of the Note 20 Ultra back in 2020, the Note series was discontinued, with a long progression of devices dating back to October 2011. What set the Note apart from other devices was that it generally came with the highest specs equipped with a smartphone, along with a large screen, and the infamous S-pen, which is a detachable stylus located on the side of the phone, which was intended for drawing, note-taking, and featured hand gestures that could control your camera from a distance, navigating through presentations, and playing media. After the Note 20 series was released, Samsung announced that they would no longer continue the line, but bring Note features to the S-series. We're finally starting to see that come into play.
The S22 Ultra seems to be a 'continuation' of the Note line in just about every aspect except the name. It improved upon almost all areas in the Note 20 Ultra. They even look similar, besides the camera module.
The S-Pen
Just like any Note, the S22 Ultra comes with a stylus built into the side slot, otherwise, I wouldn't of even considered this a continuation. The S-Pen has all the features found on older models. Visually, there is a downgrade, however. The new S-Pen only comes in a matte-black finish, no matter what color phone you get, whereas previously, the color of the pen would match the color of the phone. Besides that, it is either the same or better in action. The 9 millisecond latency on the Note 20 Ultra was already barely noticeable. The new pen features a 2.8 millisecond latency, which is even faster, a 6.2 ms difference to be exact. This means that the time from when your pen touches the display to when you actually see the output on the screen is instant.
The Display
Just like with any Samsung device, the display is stunning. The S22 Ultra comes with a huge 6.8 inch, 3,088 x 1,440, vibrant AMOLED display. This year, the screen also features LTPO 2.0 technology, which means the refresh rate of the screen is able to go from 120 hz all the way to an advertised 1 hz depending on the content you're viewing to save battery life. However, real life tests have shown that the minimum refresh rate goes down to 5 hz instead of 1 hz, which is still impressive. Previously with LTPO, the screen could only go down to 10 hz. The brightness of the screen has also been increased from 1500 nits to 1750 nits, which is useful if you plan on using your phone outdoors in the sunlight often.
The Cameras
The camera set-up on the S22 Ultra is similar to the S21 Ultra. The main-rear camera being 108 megapixels with 100x zoom, a 10 MP 3x telephoto lens, a 10 MP telephoto lens, and a 12 MP ultrawide lens, all with optical image stabilization besides the ultrawide. Samsung also introduced 'Nightography' which is basically night-mode for better low-light camera performance. Video recording for the rear tops out at 8K/24fps, with a new feature called 'autoframing', which zooms in and out depending on the amount of people in the frame. The front selfie camera comes with a 40 MP lens placed on the top-center of the display inside a punch-hole cutout. Samsung arguably takes the best photos in the industry, but still falls behind Apple in the video department.
Performance and Battery
The S22 Ultra comes with Qualcomm's new 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. While it's a very fast chip, it also has it's own set of issues being a first generation processor. In certain regions, the smartphone ships with Samsung's own Exynos 2200. Exynos chips haven't had the best reputation against Snapdragon, but the Exynos 2200 continues to close the gap between the two. This year, Samsung had actually reduced the amount of RAM that ships with the phones. With the S21 Ultra, there were options of 12GBs and 16GBs. With the S22 Ultra, Samsung has stepped it down a notch with the base 128GB model coming with 8 GBs of RAM, and with the other storage options of 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB coming with 12GBs of RAM. In terms of battery, the device comes with a huge 5000 mAh battery, the same as last year's. In theory, with software improvements, the S22 Ultra should have a great battery life improvement. But in real life tests, the S22 fell just a few minutes short of the S21's battery life. A big step up however is raising the fast-charging speed from 25W to 45W. This enables the phone to go from 0% to 50% in just 20 minutes, and then reaching 100% in about an hour.
Other
The S22 Ultra comes in four main colors, Burgundy (a rose-goldish pink color), Phantom Black, Phantom White, and Green. The website also offers some online-exclusive colors like Graphite, Sky Blue, and Red. A notable design choice for specifically the S22 Ultra (not the S22 or S22+) is that Samsung has removed the camera bump that was present in previous models. The phone also includes the Ultrasonic fingerprint reader in the display, like always since it's debut. This year, all of the models ship with Android 12/One UI 4.1.