- What's up, internet humans?
I'm Joseph Volpe, deputy tech editor at Mashable.
And today, we're going to talk about - what else,
very expensive phones.
But this time, there's a twist.
Today's very expensive phone is actually,
wait for it, s-pensive.
Oh my sides.
Oh, I'm too good with the pun-ery.
Say hello to the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Now, before I dive into the good,
the bad, and the ugly with this new phone,
we need to address the elephant in the room.
My thick, juicy, vienna sausage-like,
but apparently no good for piano playing, fingers.
Yes, it's okay. Don't cry for me.
I learned the [bleep] out of that instrument anyway
but there is one thing that consistently stands
in the way of my lovable stubs.
One massive obstacle that has drilled deep down
into my psyche and caused me daily frustration:
touch typing on a smart phone screen.
I just cannot do it.
Not two thumb typing, nor gesture swiping.
My fingers aren't svelte enough.
So won't someone please scoop up that physical
keyboard patent from Blackberry and save me already.
Until that day comes,
I have Samsung to thank for providing a solution
to a problem no one talks about.
The company's S-Pen, or what we'd call a stylus
in normal human speak,
is a digital pen that lives inside of the new S22 Ultra.
This phone, by the way, currently sits
at the top of Samsung's flagship smartphone line
with an $1,199 starting price.
And there's a reason for that.
It's got this beautiful, seamless, curved, 6.8 inch
WQHD plus AMOLED display, with a 120 Hertz refresh rate,
a monstrous, quad camera system on back,
and a considerable selfie cam on front.
I know, I know there's a focus on the cameras.
Let's all feign shock, but this time around,
Samsung claims the Ultra can make nighttime shots
that look like daytime.
Okay. That's not exactly what it claimed.
The company's horrendously obvious marketing term
for the Ultra software imaging powers is nightography.
Oh, we'll get to all that in just a bit.
Let's focus on this baby's body.
Much like last year's S21 Ultra,
the in display fingerprint sensor has made a comeback
and this time it's actually usable, like impressively so.
In fact, I'd like Samsung's engineers to have a word
with Google's Pixel 6 team, 'cause the experience is just
so, so much faster and more responsive on the S22 Ultra.
I've never, not once not even for a second,
had to think about resorting to a pin code
or attempting a second or third fingerprint press to unlock.
It just works. So, brava, Samsung.
Now can you get those same engineers
on the team that decides on the phone's branding?
Okay, thanks, bye.
What I'm not too thrilled about
is the actual design of the phone.
It's anonymous.
That's really the best way to describe it.
There aren't any signature flourishes that make
this device stand out in the crowd.
It's a cold, sleek, metal and glass slab
with edges that are so smooth and rounded that
it actually makes gripping this thing a little difficult.
What's more? It's a slippery little sucker.
Do you know how many times this phone almost went flying
out of my hands and onto the cruel, freezing cold,
by the way, and unforgiving NYC streets?
10 times, I counted. It happened 10 times.
So long story short, put a case on this thing.
That way you can give it a little personality
and protection.
Oh, and I should mention that it comes in Phantom White,
Phantom Black - these names - Green, and Burgundy.
But just get it in black and cover it up.
Some other things to note: it's 5G, no surprise there.
And WiFi 6E capable,
which just means faster wireless speeds
if you have a compatible router. You probably don't.
And it's rated IP68 so you can get grime-y with it.
I mean, please, don't go diving with it in your pocket
or dance with it in a dust storm at Burning Man,
it should survive those activities, but like,
what kind of a money-to-burn monster are you?
If you self-identify with that statement,
then please ping me after this and I'll send you my Venmo.
The S22 Ultra as you might expect,
comes in a variety of configurations.
But do take note that the $1,199 starting price
will only climb higher and higher
as you kit out your Ultra with more memory and storage.
And yes,
it's got a generous 5,000 milliamp hour battery to back up
that massive and power hungry screen.
The Ultra's got enough juice to definitely last you
until bedtime,
and then some, depending on your phone habits.
You'll wind up with just about a half charge left
if you're like me
and just spend your time scrolling through Twitter,
browsing on Chrome, or reading links on Pocket,
and watching YouTube clips to help you beat very difficult
and frustrating sections of video games
or watching clips of Tom Holland on Graham Norton.
If you make even moderate use of the cameras,
well, expect to have about 20% charge left
by the time you slip into your PJs to grab some Zs.
But no matter how you function day to day,
you will not have to plug the Ultra in
until some point the next day.
All right, fine.
Since we're already on the topic,
let's talk about the cameras.
They are, as you might expect, awesome.
On the back of this austere phone,
you're getting a 12 megapixel ultra wide camera
with a field of view that's 120 degrees.
A 108 megapixel main camera
with a field of view that's 85 degrees.
A 10 megapixel telephoto camera with 3X optical zoom.
And 10 megapixel telephoto camera with 10X optical zoom.
And on the front is a 40 megapixel selfie camera
with a 80 degree field of view.
I tested this absolute overkill of a setup
on the worst kind of winter day in NYC,
a deceptively sunny one.
And my nose, fingers, and toes paid the price,
but the photos were gorge.
I'm pretty good with snapping shots on my own,
but I felt especially skilled when
I'd review literally anything I took with the Ultra.
The main cam takes shots
with such balanced colors, shadows, and highlights.
It's also true to life, which is something I very much
appreciate as I'm team human realism.
And there's such crisp detail.
Even when you zoom in on a regular shot.
Even 3X and 10X telephoto shots have excellent detail.
100X space zoom will let net you, well, the same sort
of blurred impressionistic image.
And that's if you can even stabilize your hands
to snap the shot.
Samsung also added in some fun editing options
like object eraser, which can wipe out people
and things that are [bleeping] up your otherwise perfect
shot. A remaster photo option, which does auto retouching
like the name implies and even some face effects,
if you're the type who believes in what you look like
on Instagram.
As for those nightography shots, they're good,
not amazing and deaf not worthy
of some tired marketing term.
There's a yellowish hue to shots you'll take in this mode.
And the lighting is somewhat overdone.
It's almost like those over lit studio shots you had to take
as a kid. You know, for school. Again, it's not bad
but when I took a nighttime portrait shot,
I looked well, bizarrely shiny.
It enhanced the brightness on my dewy skin.
P.S., it was literally about to rain.
And made me look like I was wearing shimmer powder.
No hate there.
Shimmer powder is dope but that's not my look, Samsung.
Not anymore, hard wink.
Now, if you're in the market for the S22 Ultra,
which is to say, you like to spend the monies honeys,
then I'm also assuming you've used
or are aware of other similar high-end phones
like the iPhone 13 Pro and the Pixel 6 Pro.
I mention these phones because, really, image quality
is an absolute banger all around,
no matter which phone maker you pledge allegiance to.
It's just, well, you can get those other two phones
for hundreds of dollars less.
So, keep that in mind before you add to cart.
Okay. I think I've s-spent enough time on the cameras.
Let's talk about that S-Pen.
This little thing makes you feel
like a boss when you're using the Ultra, seriously,
you can be doing absolutely nothing of importance,
mindlessly consuming TikToks,
and somehow using this S-Pen to scroll
just confers a sense of power and importance.
It's a nice ego fluff
but that's not what makes it so great and so essential
to an oversized smartphone experience.
When you drag the S-Pen's tip across the screen,
it manages to somehow feel absolutely silky
and yet, necessarily rubbery.
Gliding about when you need it to
and coming to a hard, confident stop,
so you can affect gestures
or tap on icons or buttons or links.
It also helps to relieve any hand cramping you might get
from double fisting a phone of this size,
as you can calmly grip it with one
and lazily navigate to the outer reaches using the S-Pen.
There are even sweet bonuses like the ability to hover
over a photo comparison slider on a webpage
and move it left and right without touching the screen,
as I did, when checking out PS4 and PS5
graphical comparisons of Horizon Forbidden West,
or even scrolling down in an app
by just hovering the S-Pen at the bottom of a page.
And yes, latency on this thing is low, which is clutch
if you're keen to scribble your very own brand of
chicken scratch on screen
and convert that to text for note taking.
But you can also use the S-Pen for screen selection,
live messages, AR doodles, translation, and more.
I mean, sure, you can do all that if you want
but I think that's missing the fundamental point
of this thing.
It lets you swipe type or gesture type like a freakin' pro.
Gone are the days when I'd have to constantly redo my
clumsily banged out text messages
or emails, because I couldn't see which letters
my swollen fingers were blocking on screen.
With this magic wand, I could neatly
and gracefully connect letters and form sentences.
And as a result, I actually found
that I was using my phone more often
than I normally do to take notes or even write long emails.
Plus, and this is a big one, for those of you who live
in places that experience four seasons,
it is crucial in cold weather.
You can leave those smartphone friendly gloves at home
because all you need to keep on using your phone like normal
is this slim little wand.
But wait, there's more.
Samsung, as it is known to do, has packed in a [bleep]
load of features for the S-Pen.
And they're known as Air Actions.
This basically means that you can control certain apps
or launch functions using the button
on the side of the S-Pen.
So say you want to snap a shot
but you don't want to hold the Ultra in hand.
You can just press that button to launch the camera
and then press again to snap a shot.
Or if you're listening to Spotify,
you can use it to skip music tracks
and even set other app specific actions.
It's neat, it's handy,
and it's going to require you to sink some time digging
into all of these menus.
And that's the Galaxy S22 Ultra in a nutshell.
If you couldn't already tell, I like this thing, I do.
I think it's ugly, but that's what phone cases are for.
I mean, it works like a charm,
the display and refresh rate are a match made in heaven.
And you're going to love the results you get
with those cameras.
And then there's the splendid S-Pen,
which really, every large phone should have
as a standard nowadays.
It's just such a quality of life enhancement.
And once you get used to it,
it's hard to go back to relying on just your, I don't know,
I'm assuming long, svelte, vampiric-like fingers.
The thing is, a starting price of $1,199 is just obscene.
That's laptop territory, people.
And you can get a phone that's just as excellent
for cheaper.
If you do choose to opt for the S22 Ultra, well, no shame.
Me and my piano playing stubs will understand.