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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Review

Charles TYK

A few weeks ago, I unboxed the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, which is the first Galaxy S series device to have a built-in S Pen. I’ve been using the phone as my daily driver for three weeks and here comes the full review of this Note-able Ultra device.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Specs

Same Familiar Design

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra looks pretty much like the successor of the Galaxy Note20 Ultra, as mentioned in the first look article. Looking at the front of it, the phone looks pretty identical to the Galaxy Note20 Ultra — a boxy design, hole-punch selfie camera, and curved screen.

The back of the phone now doesn’t have the signature Contour Cut Camera design and the huge camera bump. Samsung just eliminates everything and put all the cameras, sensors, and LED flash at the top left corner. It looks pretty minimalist, which also proves that you don’t need a huge camera bump to have such a powerful camera setup.

The bottom of the phone houses the slot for S Pen, speaker, USB-C port, microphone, and SIM tray. Yup, it’s a little tight to put everything at the bottom of the phone, the Galaxy Note20 Ultra has the SIM tray located at the top of the phone but I believe Samsung has a valid reason for that. The volume rocker and power button are located at their usual spots.

One noticeable difference compared to its predecessor is the vibration motor, which is now an x-axis motor instead of a z-axis motor. This new motor generally improves the haptic feedback but reduces the vibration intensity at the same time. If you think the Galaxy S21 Ultra vibration mode is pretty loud, then this vibration is softer. Sometimes I didn’t even notice when I place the phone on the table or in my pocket.

Best-in-class Display

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra sports a 6.8-inch Edge QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. The new LTPO panel now allows the screen refresh rate to adjust from 1Hz to 120Hz depending on what content the screen is showing. Additionally, the phone still has the ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor that works pretty well.

As usual, it has a top-class display, which remains to be the benchmark in the smartphone industry. If you want to have the best viewing experience, this is the best one right now. However, compared to last year’s Galaxy S21 Ultra, I do feel that the phone is now wider, which isn’t that comfortable to hold like before.

Snapdragon Processor

For the first time, we are getting the Qualcomm Snapdragon variant. The Galaxy S22 Ultra is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor with up to 12GB RAM and 512GB UFS 3.1 storage. Nope, we are not getting the 1TB model and my review unit is the 8GB RAM + 128GB storage variant, which is the base model. Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend you to get the base model as it has lesser RAM and I’m afraid 128GB storage is not enough today.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor performs well as expected, but it gets hot easily. Thankfully, the phone has vapor chamber cooling to keep the phone cool most of the time. In my experience, I did not encounter any overheating issues even using the phone for an extensive period of time. The phone might thermal throttle a bit, that’s because Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor tends to run hot under heavy load.

In recent years, I’d go for the Snapdragon variant since it often performs better than the Exynos variant. However, I was actually looking forward to trying out the new Exynos 2200 processor since it comes with a powerful AMD RDNA 2 architecture-based Samsung Xclipse 920 GPU. Sadly, Samsung didn’t bring that in this time, probably due to the chip shortage.

One UI 4.1

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra runs on One UI 4.1 based on Android 12, which feels pretty much the same but with some minor improvements.

One UI 4.1 now also allows you to turn on/off the camera access and microphone access instantly via quick settings toggles. Furthermore, it will also show a green indicator on the top right of the screen if the app is using the camera or microphone.

It also comes with video call effects that let you turn on virtual background, auto framing, and change the mic mode when you are in the middle of a video call.

As for the S Pen, it does pretty much the same as the Galaxy Note20 Ultra, but the latency has been reduced to just 2.8ms thanks to the AI-based coordinate prediction technology. The overall experience just feels a lot smoother and it’s like writing on paper.

Same Camera System, New NPU

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra has the same camera setup as its predecessor — a 12MP ultra-wide camera + 108MP wide camera with OIS + 10MP 3x telephoto camera + 10MP 10x telephoto camera (100x Space Zoom) + Laser AF sensor. The phone also has a 40MP front camera for taking selfies.

First of all, the color consistency between the ultra-wide camera, main camera, 3x telephoto camera, and 10x telephoto camera has been improved. Something that most devices nowadays are struggling with, though I do hope the transition switching between lenses can be smoother.

The 10x telephoto camera offers up to 100x digital zoom, but I wouldn’t recommend you zoom all the way to 100x since photos aren’t that sharp. The 50x zoom is still alright for taking a moon shot, but anything beyond 30x zoom for daily photos will start to lose the quality.

As for night mode, Samsung claims that the Galaxy S22 Ultra has better low-light capability thanks to the new NPU. It is actually quite impressive but shooting low-light photos with 10x zoom won’t be that sharp unless you have a pretty steady hand or mount the phone to a tripod.

Lastly, I still don’t see the point of shooting photos in 108MP mode. Enabling the 108MP detail enhancer will definitely improve the sharpness of the photo, but I think 12MP photos are enough for your daily use. Overall, the Galaxy S22 Ultra shoots slightly better photos than its predecessor despite having the same camera system. When compared to an iPhone, it actually shoots sharper photos, but we’ll leave that to another article.

45W Fast Charging

The Galaxy S22 Ultra now packs a 5,000mAh battery that supports 45W Super Fast Charging 2.0. However, the charging speed is more of the same as its predecessor even though it has a higher wattage charging solution. The battery life is pretty great, just like the Galaxy S21 Ultra. I was able to get more than 7 hours of screen-on-time and it can definitely last through a day or two easily.

Final Words

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is available in three variants — 8GB+128GB, 12GB+256GB, and 12GB+512GB, retailing at RM5,099, RM5,499, and RM5,899. Last year’s Galaxy S21 Ultra had already lived up to its “Ultra” moniker by offering the best in a smartphone, and the same goes for this year’s model.

The Galaxy S22 Ultra has all the best things you can find in an Android smartphone, but the question is, do you really need one? Hence, the S Pen is here to justify its position. If you are a Galaxy Note fan, just go right ahead and get it since this is basically the one replacing the Galaxy Note20 Ultra with a new name. Just make sure you don’t get at least the 12GB+256GB model as I’m afraid 128GB isn’t enough for an “Ultra” user like you.

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