Hands on: Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review – familiar yet formidable

Early Verdict

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: Two-minute preview

The Galaxy S23 Ultra offers up a familiar face that, at a glance, looks identical to its predecessor. The changes are there though, they’re just not as big as those you’ll find on the Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus. (You can read our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S23 review and our hands-on Samsung S23 Plus review for more on those two phones).

The same squared design plays host to a tweaked display that offers a greater flat surface area, giving the S Pen stylus more room to work with. The front and back now sport the latest and most resilient Gorilla Glass Victus 2, and all the mod-cons from its predecessor,– including IP68 dust and water resistance and 45W wired charging – are here.

Samsung has also worked to integrate more recycled materials into the phone’s design, with the likes of recycled fishing nets going into the construction of the S Pen’s inner cover and the speaker module, for example.

Some elements – like the 6.8-inch 1Hz to 120Hz adaptive Dynamic AMOLED 2X display and the 5,000mAh battery – have received seemingly minor tweaks (greater color accuracy and 20% improved efficiency, in the case of the above examples, respectively).

On the inside, however, there are some bigger changes, like the new ‘Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy’ that Samsung and Qualcomm collaborated on, which is purpose-built to offer rival-beating performance (51% better NPU performance, 41% GPU performance and 33% CPU performance than previously, according to Samsung). The Ultra – along with the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Plus – is also one of the first phones out there to boast faster and more efficient LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage.

A familiar-looking rear four-camera rear array hides a new 200MP lead sensor that offers 16-to-1 pixel-binning, with the aim of advancing the S23 Ultra’s ‘Nightography’ abilities for everything from general snaps, to portrait photography, to videos of the night sky using the new Astro Hyperlapse mode.

Those who want to shoot with greater control now also benefit from enhanced editing control too, with the ability to work with shots at up to 50MP captured in Expert RAW mode.

You still get a 12MP ultrawide and dual telephoto lenses at 3x and 10x (periscopic) zoom, respectively, granting the S23 Ultra the same promise of class-leading camera versatility offered up by the last couple of generations of Ultra.

Samsung has also renewed its commitment to offering up to four years of OS updates and five years of security updates, across the Galaxy S23 series. All three arrive with One UI 5.1 atop Android 13, which folds in better collaborative working in Samsung Notes and an enhanced Privacy Dashboard, among other things.

While the starting price (in the US, at least) remains consistent with the Galaxy S22 Ultra, Samsung has doubled the base storage to 256GB, while the top-tier model can be had with 12GB of RAM (up from 8GB on the base version) and a whopping 1TB of storage.

For a deeper dive, read on – and stay tuned for our full review very soon.

Hands-on Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: Price and availability

• Starts at $1,199.99 / £1,249 / AU$1,949
• Same US starting price despite double the storage YoY
• Top 1TB model is more expensive YoY across key markets

The Galaxy S23 Ultra launched alongside its anticipated siblings – the standard Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23 Plus – on February 1, with pre-order availability kicking off on the same day and running until February 16 (check out the best Samsung Galaxy S23 pre-order offers in our dedicated article). The Galaxy S23 Ultra is then available to buy as of Friday, February 17.

One of the nice fundamental upgrades over the Galaxy S22 Ultra is that base storage has been doubled to 256GB (or rather, there simply is no 128GB S23 Ultra), which benefits US customers in particular, as they’re being asked to pay no more than they did for last year’s base 128GB S22 Ultra, at $1,199.99.

The 512GB model is $20 cheaper compared to its predecessor, at $1,379.99, while the top-tier Samsung.com-exclusive 1TB storage variant costs $20 more, at an eye-watering $1,619.99.

Things are generally worse for UK customers compared to the S22 Ultra’s pricing, with the baseline S23 Ultra costing the same as last year’s 256GB model at £1,249, while the 512GB and 1TB versions are £70 and £100 more expensive each, at £1,399 and £1,599, respectively.

Compared to the S22 Ultra, Australian customers pay AU$100 more for the base model (although it’s still technically AU$50 less than the 256GB version was last year), at AU$1,949. The 512GB version is also AU$100 more this year, while the top 1TB S23 Ultra is AU$200 more, compared to the price of its 2022 predecessor.

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra comes in three storage configurations, with 8GB of RAM (LPDDR5X) in the base model and 12GB in the two higher storage models.

Specs otherwise remain consistent across all three variants.

Hands-on Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: Design

• Almost identical design to predecessor
• Premium look, feel, and materials
• Improved environmental credentials

The S22 Ultra was the first of Samsung’s phones to truly fuse Galaxy S and Galaxy Note sensibilities together, and in doing so it shrugged off the contour-cut camera-led aesthetics of its predecessor and its launch siblings. Instead, it favored a cleaner and more squared form; partly as a means of further differentiating itself from the standard S22 and S22 Plus, but also in order to physically accommodate an integrated S Pen stylus.

For the S23 series, the standard and Plus models have played catch-up in the design department, while the S23 Ultra offers only subtle refinements that, to the eye, will be almost impossible to spot for those familiar with the S22 Ultra.

There’s a similar pill-shaped top-down profile, with curved front and back glass feeding into a metal frame, although one change S22 Ultra users might notice when they pick up the S23 Ultra, is that Samsung has reduced the radius of the curved edges of the display, giving you a greater flat surface area on which to use the integrated S Pen; a subtle but welcome tweak, functionally speaking.

With launch S23 colors consistent across the whole range this year, you can pick the Ultra up in one of four finishes: Phantom Black, cream, green and lavender in most places. However, as with previous years, there are also a handful of colors exclusive to Samsung.com, including red, Sky Blue, Graphite and Lime.

While the cap of the S Pen matches the body color of your choice, the rest of the stylus is black, regardless of your chosen finish.

The company’s excellent efforts in durability persist too, with IP68-certified dust and water ingress protection, a resilient Armor Aluminum alloy frame and, for the first time on any phone, the latest Gorilla Glass Victus 2, from Corning.

For all the advanced technology that Samsung has managed to pack into the S23 series, it’s also tried to up the ante in terms of environmentally-friendly materials, with the Ultra being the real champion of this initiative. 80% of the deco film used in the construction of the phone’s back is recycled, as is 22% of the glass used across its body, along with 20% of the S Pen’s inner cover – reportedly hewn, in part, from ocean-bound polymide.

Samsung claims that other recycled materials that have been hammered into the shape of the S23 Ultra include discarded fishing nets, water barrels, PET bottles and pre-consumer recycled aluminum, which have contributed to the construction of components (12 in all) like the volume keys and SIM tray, speaker arrangement, 5G antenna arrangement and more.

While Samsung isn’t alone in working to improve the the green credentials of its phones (the iPhone comes to mind), this is certainly the most vocal we’ve seen the company about a particular handset and it represents a push that will hopefully catch on with rival phone makers.

Hands-on Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: Display

• Familiar display experience to predecessor
• Promise of more accurate colors and better eye comfort viewing
• Responsive S Pen stylus experience

Aside from that reduced curvature along its edges and greater protection thanks to that new Gorilla Glass Victus 2, the S23 Ultra’s display offers a familiar viewing experience to its predecessor.

You once again get a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel, with a resolution of 1440 x 3088 and a dynamic refresh rate that can scale between 1Hz and 120Hz, as it automatically shifts to prioritize power efficiency or visual fluidity as needed.

At the hands-on event, color and brightness – even against the venue’s harsh spotlights and the light flooding in from the floor to ceiling windows – made for an enjoyable viewing experience, which Samsung has apparently tuned to serve up more accurate colors against a wider array of ambient lighting scenarios this time around (three, to be precise), with what it calls Advanced Vision Booster; adjusting tone and color as needed.

Max brightness still doesn’t compare to the iPhone 14 Pro‘s impressive peak on paper (the S23 range all tops out at 1,750 nits), but in real-world viewing, the experience still lends itself exceptionally well to enjoying media. Meanwhile, Samsung didn’t impart any new claims of further-reduced S Pen latency or additional Air Gesture functionality this time around, but it’s already impressively responsive and the user experience has been augmented in other ways that appeal to productivity.

Hands-on Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: Cameras

• First Samsung phone with a 200MP sensor
• Improved ‘Nightography’ experience for stills, portrait and video
• Integrated Expert RAW shooting now supports up to 50MP

Cameras are one area where the Ultra has always stood out when looking at the best Samsung phones out there and the multi-sensor setup that Samsung’s been using for the last few generations has consistently ensured that these phones wind up at or near the top of our best camera phones roundup year after year.

While the 12MP ultrawide and dual 3x and 10x 10MP telephoto sensors on the back of the S23 Ultra feel decidedly familiar, the phone shrugs off the primary 108MP resolution sensor seen on previous entries in the series and replaces it – for the first time on a Samsung phone – with a whopping 200MP primary camera; thought to be the ISOCELL HP2 that our cameras editor, Tim Coleman, dived into a few days prior to the S23 series’ launch.

The transition to this new Adaptive Pixel Sensor looks like it holds promise, with such a change in hardware sometimes resulting in a drop in quality for some manufacturers; whose camera teams still need to get to grips with how to handle the new component. An on-site side by side with a Google Pixel 7 Pro suggests the S23 Ultra gives users more of what Samsung’s phone cameras are know for: consistently great quality snaps with a higher contrast and more stylized approach to colors than the comparatively natural looking shots that tend to come out of Pixels and iPhones.

By default, the S23 Ultra’s main camera pixel bins images by 16 to 1, down to 12.5MP stills that use all that additional pixel data to iron out image shake, while also capturing more accurate colors and taking in more light. Speaking of which, low light photography seems to be a big area of focus for the camera experience this year; with the promise of enhanced night shots across the board, including portraits, as well as astrophotography hyperlapse video mode.

Stabilization across stills and video has been improved too, with double the angle of movement now possible in the OIS (optical image stabilization) system, compared to last year’s S22 Ultra (3-degrees on the S23 Ultra), along with improved VDIS and faster autofocus from the ‘Super Quad Pixel’ sensor, as Samsung brands it.

For users who want to get more granular with the Ultra’s photography experience, the Expert RAW mode – integrated into the camera UI – now supports an output of up to 50MP, rather than 12MP previously. The Ultra also lets you snap 200MP stills, if you want to play with the full sensor’s available detail.

In the pursuit of switching up sensors, all three of the S23 series gain a new 12MP front-facing snapper this generation, set into the display (Samsung hasn’t yet been bold enough to import the Z Fold series’ under-display camera), which holds promise and brings more consistency to the experience of owning an S23, regardless of model.

Without side by side testing, it’s hard to say for sure, but it felt like a faster sensor, while offering up a nice overall image with impressive dynamic range as selfie snappers go, something brands as its ‘Super HDR selfie camera’.

Hands-on Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: Performance and battery

• Promises of industry-leading performance
• Early interactions were smooth and peppy
• Same capacity battery, but 20% improved efficiency

It’s not really a secret that Samsung has connections in high places, building Wear OS 3 with Google and having co-developed the last few generations of its own flagship chips in conjunction with Qualcomm, but that partnership has matured into something exceptional for 2023.

Whereas previously, users in different markets could expect Galaxy S devices powered by either Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm Snapdragon silicon, the Galaxy S23 series gains Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip worldwide.

This eliminates performance discrepancies that previously left users of Exynos-powered Galaxy S phones feeling behind the curve and also helps with aspects like camera processing (thanks to the use of the same ISP across regions) and battery life consistency.

Not only has the 8 Gen 2 already shown its capabilities in the reports from the first few devices already relying upon it, but Samsung has managed to gain access to an exclusive tuned variant of the SoC dubbed the ‘Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy’. In a nutshell, the prime Cortex-X3 core inside the chipset has been overclocked to 3.36GHz (rather than 3.2GHz, as is standard); without compromising efficiency or battery longevity.

As Samsung’s Nick Porter pointed out during a one-on-one interview with TechRadar ahead of launch, the vapor chamber is “2.7x bigger on average across the whole S23 series” this year, helping with thermal efficiency, while the use of faster and more efficient LPDDR5X memory and UFS 4.0 storage (a first in the mobile market), lend themselves to greater performance and quality of life too.

The battery specs read the same as the S22 Ultra, with a 5,000mAh cell inside the S23 Ultra supporting 45W wired charging (along with wireless and reverse wireless charging), however, Samsung claims that the collective effect of the new hardware efficiencies and tighter integration between hardware and software result in a 20% improvement that Porter claims delivers “the longest ever battery life on a Galaxy S smartphone;” a claim that will surely be put to the test ahead of our full review.

Hands-on Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: Software

Samsung is class-leading in terms of making the best Android phones for update support, promising four years of OS updates and five years of security updates across the Galaxy S23 series, with all three devices running on the latest Android 13, dressed in the company’s own One UI 5.1 out of the box.

It’s a familiar experience, with squircle icons and a generally flat graphical style as standard, dressed with a few new additions that appear to focus on collaboration, convenience and security.

Hands-on Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review: Also consider

Alex joined as TechRadar’s Senior Phones Editor in June 2022, but brings over a decade’s worth of experience to the role, with an expertise in smartphones, tablets and wearables. He’s covered keynotes hosted by the biggest brands and attended the launches for some of the most influential mobile products of the last few years. His experience was amassed at some of the most reputable consumer technology publications out there, including GSMArena, TechAdvisor and Trusted Reviews. Alex is currently holding out hope for the Pixel Watch’s success and is excited for the advancements coming to the world of foldable phones in the near future.

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