Today on my desk we have a brand new top of the line Galaxy S23 Ultra – Samsung's
current best offering to the masses. No time to waste. Let's get started.
[Intro]
This latest and greatest smartphone is tucked inside a 100% recycled paper box. Super cool
of Samsung to cut out the plastic packaging. Samsung is very quick to point out all their
new environmentally friendly initiatives on their website, like using natural dyes in their Earth
Tone smartphone lineup. The one in front of us is an eco green color – not too shabby. Natural
color dyes that are completely down to earth sound epically awesome at first glance. I'm
as big of a tree hugger as the next guy, but when we scroll down a bit on the website and
see the fine print, only 10% of this down to earth dye is natural. I'm no rocket surgeon,
but according to my math that leaves about 90% of the dye being unnatural, which is a rather
weird thing to brag about. The word for this kind of thing is called “green washing,” and Samsung
does it again right here on their website saying that their phone has recycled glass on the screen,
and recycled rear glass panels without any asterisks or caveats. We do know that
glass can be 100% recyclable, so Samsung using totally recycled glass isn't out of the question.
But if we look into the Corning Gorilla Glass recipe, Vicis 2 is only using 22% pre consumer
recycled content...not even postconsumer. And of course, we still see scratches at a level 6,
with deeper grooves at a level 7. And definitely don't get me wrong, any amount of recycling is
good recycling. But as the literal largest manufacturer of smartphones on the planet,
Samsung shouldn't be patting themselves on the back for doing the bare minimum for the planet.
Up here at the top of the screen, protected under the glass, we find the 12 megapixel
hole punch selfie camera. And just for kicks and giggles we'll snap a quick little selfie
and compare it to a selfie from my personal 3 ½ year old Note 10 Plus. Feel free to take a look,
admire for a second and be honest with yourself, you're not even sure which picture came from which
phone. Samsung has had 3 ½ years to give me a reason to upgrade and I ain't seeing it yet.
The sides of the phone are covered with a thin layer of plastic again. Not my favorite, but
cardboard can be abrasive to a pristine finish. I can see why Samsung would want to be careful.
The sides of the S23 Ultra are made from Armor Aluminum. You
can see by the way the 90% unnatural dye scrapes off leaving bare metal behind.
The side buttons are made from metal and can still be removed. The top of the phone has a
microphone hole and an antenna line. Not much happening on the metal left side of the phone.
The bottom however, is where everything is happening. We have our loudspeaker grill,
the USB-C charging port that can charge at 45 watts, and a SIM card tray right next to
the microphone hole. The SIM card tray does have a gray rubber ring to help with the S23 Ultra's ip68
water resistance. And, of course, our good friend the s-pen. Probably my favorite part of the Ultra
lineup. The s-pen is useful for a lot of things. The tip can be detected by the screen using the
coil of copper wires in the tip. The s-pen can also act as a remote control for the camera
using the button, a bluetooth chip, and internal capacitor at the back end that can wirelessly
charge up in seconds. We'll check out the internal wireless s-pen charging during the teardown video.
The phone itself has its own separate wireless charging capabilities underneath the back glass
panel, 15 watts of wireless charging under the glass, with 4.5 watts of reverse wireless
charging. The whole thing is covered with glass, just like we've seen for the past 8 years. The
only real difference between this S23 Ultra and last year's S22 Ultra is the camera setup. Well,
actually, just one of the cameras. We have the normal 12 megapixel ultra wide camera up top,
but this guy here in the middle is a whopping 200 megapixels, and legitimately does some cool stuff,
like take pictures of the moon. And has twice the normal optical image stabilization, which will
be awesome to take a look at during the teardown. We have a 10 megapixel 10x telephoto zoom camera,
and another 10 megapixel 3x zoom over on the side. And I'm not going to lie,
that 200 megapixel camera is pretty cool, but not $1,200 cool.
Flipping around to the screen side of things, we once again have a 6.8 inch, 1440p Dynamic AMOLED,
with a variable refresh rate to help prolong battery life. If that sounds familiar,
it's because it's the same exact screen Samsung used last year. You might be asking,
'Hey Jerry, what happened to all the smartphone innovations we used to see from Samsung. And well,
you might have noticed that Samsung is spending a lot of money making it seem
like everyone is buying new tech every single year – billions of dollars in fact. But the truth is,
even with all those billions spent, a refreshing ninety percent of people do
not upgrade every year. Even polling among super nerds, more than 60% of you wait more than three
years to upgrade your phone which I think is awesome. As my mom would say, use it up,
wear it out, make it do, or do without. Even though Samsung is using billions to make you
think upgrading yearly is normal or that buying a phone with 10% natural dye is environmentally
friendly. If Samsung really wanted people to upgrade, my suggestion would be to take some
of those tens of billions of dollars worth of marketing and plop it back into the innovating
budget and let the phones sell themselves with features...kind of like Tesla does with cars.
Got a little carried away there. The screen actually handled the heat pretty well – all
60 seconds of it. I hope Samsung handles the heat. And just to add a little insult
to injury let me know down in the comments if you got a Samsung advertisement on this video.
As far as durability goes, Samsung has never had any issues besides the model that exploded,
everything else has been pretty great, and this S23 Ultra is no exception.
Bending from the front we get no flex. And flipping over the Ultra to the back...rigid
as a rock. For anyone who does buy this model, whether it's this year for full price or next
year for half price, the S23 Ultra is indeed still structurally sound, even though the
marketing team is pulling far more weight than the innovation team. If you're the type of person
who doesn't want to be manipulated by billions of dollars worth of advertising and only wants
to be manipulated by regular dollars worth of advertising, I'd love to introduce you to dbrand.
The only reason my phone has lasted 3 ½ years is because I have a case on it – the Grip case from
dbrand to be specific. And you might have surmised from this video, I'm not that nice to phones,
even my own phone. But my personal dbrand Grip case has held up extremely well over the years.
The buttons are still clicky even after all this time, and my Teardown Skin, which allows
me to see the insides from the outside, is also still very much intact...mostly. Three and a half
years is a long time. Dbrand stocks the Grip case for over 50 different models of phones,
so they have you covered quite literally. The best protection though, is that just
for 3 pennies a day, this case has protected me from having to buy a brand new $1,200 phone that
isn't all that exciting. You can grab your own dbrand Grip case down in the video description
because from the looks of things, it might be a while before Samsung starts innovating again.
Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. This video is tearing Samsung apart, the next
video is taking Samsung apart – very different. Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.