This is Samsung’s ultimate flagship- the Galaxy S22 ultra, and unlike the rest of this year’s
S series, it brings a design and features which are more like a Galaxy Note phone.
The most obvious of these is the improved stylus support, but there’s a lot more to this phone than that.
I’m Will for GSMArena and let’s see what the S22 Ultra has to offer in our full review.
The galaxy S22 ultra brings a design that’s quite different from the rest of the S series.
It’s larger and heftier, and its cameras come straight out of the back,
rather than being mounted in a camera bump.
Plus the ultra has a flat back, top and bottom, quite like a galaxy Note device.
Another big change over last year’s model is that the S22 ultra
integrates the stylus into the design, with a dedicated dock at the bottom.
It’s a lot more secure, and it means you always have your pen with you-
unlike the S21 Ultra where you’d need to keep it elsewhere.
Don’t worry about the dock- the phone has full ip68 rated ingress protection.
Plus it’s overall quite durable with gorilla glass victus plus on the back and the front.
As you can see, the S22 ultra is a lot less like a Galaxy S phone and more like a Galaxy Note-
and since that lineup is discontinued now, this is the spiritual successor.
And while the stylus is the same as saw in the last generation,
the tech supporting it has been upgraded here. The S22 ultra’s AI can even better anticipate
your movements, reducing the latency of the pen from 9 milliseconds to less than 3.
So taking notes is a bit more responsive. And the function for converting your handwriting into text
has been improved to be even more accurate.
Adding media to your notes is nothing new.
But now, you can add a snapshot of a whole webpage, if you want to.
The function doesn’t work that well in Europe though,
since websites need to ask for permissions- and these sorts of popups end up in your notes too.
Alright let’s move on to some other features- like the display itself.
It’s a 6.8 inch AMOLED with a QHD resolution and a fast 120Hz refresh rate.
This display is curved at the edges, wrapping around to meet the frame.
It creates a neat effect, but some people would prefer a flat screen like on the other S22 phones.
The 120hz refresh rate means that swiping and scrolling on screen looks much smoother.
The refresh rate is adaptive - with static content, the UI rendering can go as low as 24Hz and as low
as 1fps to save energy, and it will also adjust to match other content on screen.
The display is awesome. With its high resolution, content looks quite sharp, and you also get great
contrast and deep blacks thanks to the OLED tech. There’s HDR 10 plus support,
and colors can be super accurate, depending on the profile you choose in color settings.
The S22 ultra also has class leading max brightness. With the manual slider, you
can achieve 500 nits, and that boosts up to around 830 nits if you enable the extra brightness mode.
But that’s not all. Enabling auto brightness mode gets you an even
bigger boost- we measured a maximum over 12 hundred and 50 nits- pretty crazy stuff.
In addition to that, when auto brightness mode is on, a new feature called vision
booster will also adjust the contrast of the screen based on ambient light,
to make legibility out in the sun even better. And under the screen sits an ultrasonic
fingerprint reader. It’s quite fast and responsive to wake up and unlock the phone.
For audio, the S22 ultra has a pair of stereo speakers, with the earpiece acting as the
second one. The speakers earned a score of good on our loudness charts, but are a
bit quieter than last year’s model, and we’ve also heard better low end in the competition.
Storage isn’t expandable here via microSD,
but you can opt for up to a terabyte of space onboard, if you need it!
The interface of the S22 ultra is Samsung’s OneUI 4.1, based on android 12. Besides the
features that are based on the stylus, it’s the same UI you’d get on the S22 and S22 plus.
Of course, one important aspect to keep in mind is Samsung software support.
They promise 4 generations of Android and OneUI updates, and 5 years of security updates.
The interface also brings a few new features, like additional functionality and support for widgets.
Android 12 allows you to change the color of your system menus and
even your icons to match your wallpaper.
And there’s a dedicated privacy dashboard, which organizes all of your privacy
and permissions options into one easy to reach spot.
Under the hood of the S22 ultra is either an Exynos 2200 chipset, for some markets,
or a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, for others. Both are based on a 4nm process, and are comparable,
but the Exynos variant has a GPU that was designed in collaboration with AMD.
We have an Exynos model, and performance here is great, as you’d expect
from a high end flagship. It’s more than enough to multitask and play heavy games without a hitch.
Plus the thermal management is quite reasonable here. Of course the previous generation is tough
to beat, and in benchmarks the improvements compared to the S21 ultra are modest.
Powering the S22 ultra is a 5000mAh battery, like last year’s model, but battery life scores
are a little less this time around, with an endurance rating of 108 hours in our tests.
Still that’s not too shabby. Charging is a bit complicated though.
The S22 ultra supports up to 45 watt fast charging, but when using such an adapter
we weren’t able to charge the phone meaningfully faster than with a 25 watt one.
There will be a new 45W charger coming from Samsung, but based on the specs and info so far,
we don’t expect charging speed will be any different with it.
Now we have the cameras: a 108MP main cam, a 10MP telephoto with OIS and 3x optical zoom,
a 10MP periscope with 10x optical zoom, and a 12MP ultrawide.
The setup is almost exactly the same as last year's,
except that the telephoto cameras have different sensors with smaller pixels, for some reason.
Anyway, let’s start off with photo quality from the main cam. Its 12MP shots are good, but don’t
blow us away. There’s plenty of detail, accurate exposure and lively colors.
and the dynamic range isn’t as wide as we expect from a flagship.
The ultrawide cam delivers sharp and detailed images which have wide dynamic range.
There does seem to be some graininess and extra sharpening here.
At 3 times zoom, we see a good level of detail, wide enough dynamic range,
and colors that match the other cameras well. And actually, these zoomed shots are pretty
noise free- cleaner than last year’s even. Portrait mode on the S22 ultra delivers
great results. You can shoot portraits with either the main or the 3 times telephoto,
and you get excellent subject separation as well as a very natural looking defocused background.
Photos from the 10 times telephoto have respectable detail levels,
and good contrast and colors.
If you’re shooting in auto mode in low light, the S22 ultra will automatically apply night
mode processing. These photos from the main cam are impressive, with an excellent level
of detail and well preserved colors. You also get nicely contained highlights and developed shadows.
You can also toggle a dedicated night mode, which dials up this processing even further
The result is that lighting looks brighter and warmer,
and there’s heavier sharpening and reduced noise.
The effect on dynamic range is pretty minimal.
The ultrawide cam will also use the auto night mode in dark situations,
and these shots are pretty good. They have very good detail,
wide dynamic range, and lively colors. There is some visible noise though.
Turning on the full night mode cleans up that noise,
and it brightens up and restores the detail in the shadows.
Shooting with the 3 times telephoto with the auto night mode applied will produce
decent images, but they are on the soft side. Here toggling the full night mode is well
worth it. The picture is significantly sharper, and shadows get a nice boost.
At 10 times zoom, with auto night mode on the photos look okay,
but are soft and have some patches of noise. The dedicated night mode makes a big difference,
improving the sharpness, the noise levels, and detail in the shadows.
Selfies are taken with a 40MP front facing cam, but come out in 10MP.
These are superb, with plenty of detail, accurate colors, and wide dynamic range.
Plus the camera has autofocus, so your selfies will come out sharp.
The S22 ultra can record video in up to 4K at 60fps with all of its cameras,
as well as 8K at 24fps with the main one. Starting off with 4K video from the main cam,
you see a very good amount of detail, accurate colors and excellent dynamic range.
8K looks good on a specs sheet, but there isn’t noticeably more detail here than with the 4K
footage. Plus it’s softer, with some visible artifacts, and the clips take up a lot more space.
4K video from the ultrawide cam is detailed, with wide dynamic range.
The colors are a bit warmer than those you get from the main cam.
3 times zoomed footage is sharped and detailed, with excellent dynamic range and spot on colors.
There is some visible noise here though. 4K video quality from the 10 times telephoto
isn’t mind blowing, but it is respectable, especially for this sort of camera.
There’s electronic stabilization available on all of the cameras and resolutions,
and it does a decent job, though we did notice some overcorrection when panning.
There’s also a super steady mode which smooths things out even further, but only in 1080p.
At night, the S22 ultra can record relatively good videos, with its main cam
The detail here is better than last year’s model. Colors are well preserved too.
The dynamic range isn’t the widest though, with both clipped highlights and dark shadows.
The ultrawide doesn’t do as well, and its videos come out underexposed and soft.
In a similar fashion, the telephoto cameras struggle at night.
The 3 times zoomed clips are more usable than the 10 times ones though.
So, that’s the Galaxy S22 Ultra. After Samsung skipped releasing a Note phone last year,
and then discontinued the Notes altogether, this is what they’ve come up with.
It brings the latest flagship features, like
the cutting edge AMOLED display and top notch chipset,
plus the killer cameras, but on top of that there’s the extra responsive and dockable stylus.
So at the end of the day, if you’re looking for the features and form
factor of a Galaxy Note phone, in a new device with the latest software support,
the S22 ultra is worth recommending. Thanks for watching and see you on the next one.