Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra - Another Year, Another Best Android Phone Ever

If there's one thing Samsung knows how to do, it's producing the ultimate flagship phone.

For years now, the top-of-the-line Galaxy S-Series handset has set the benchmark for all other manufacturers to match throughout the rest of the year. Not only do they seldom beat Samsung's standard, very few find themselves capable of even meeting it.

The Ultra is the Galaxy with ALL the features; if you can put it in a phone, this is the phone that will have it.

Trouble is, if you already have all the features... And there aren't really any new features coming along... What's actually new about your new phone?

There's no denying it; even when placed side-by-side, it's extremely difficult to tell the difference between last year's and this year's Ultras - not physically, anyway. I even tried putting the S23 into the S22's case and it fit - except for a slight bulge in the bottom left hand corner.

To be precise, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is the tiniest bit longer and wider - I'm talking a mere millimetre or two - and the only real discernable difference is the sides of the 2023 version are ever so slightly squarer, making this large, heavy, slippery device just a tad easier to hold.

The colour choices have been tweaked too - don't worry, Phantom Black is still an option (albeit a boring one) but this year's green is much more subtle and all three S23s now come in Lavender and Cream as well.

Obviously, the display is still the same large size - 6.8 inches - although Samsung now refers to this superbly bright and colourful screen as an "Edge" Quad HD+ display - presumably alluding to the fact that although the new, even tougher, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 still curves over at the edges, it doesn't do it as much. This is an ongoing aesthetics-vs-usability battle many phone makers seem to have been fighting with themselves for years now; a curvy display is so sexy. Yet a flat-screen eliminates the numerous false touches you often make when holding a curved screen along its edges. By landing somewhere in between, the slightly boxier S23 Ultra goes a long way to solving this issue.

I mentioned the Victus 2 glass - very tough - as are the Armor Aluminium rails running around the edge of the handset. I'm not just taking Sumsung's word for it, either. I've dropped this large, heavy, slippery phone out of my pocket and onto my hardwood floors several times now - not in the interest of a comprehensive review, I'm just a klutz. However, I'm pleased to report there's been no discernable damage. So no need to tell Samsung - let's just keep this between us.

Especially given how outrageously expensive this thing is. The S23 Ultra starts at NZ$2,299.00. That's a lot of money in anybody's book. Luckily, it might even be worth it.

Like I said at the top; the Ultra is the phone with ALL the features. When you choose Ultra, things like industry-leading water and dust resistance, large storage, big RAM and fast charging - USB-C or wireless - are just minimum expectations. You want a built-in stylus? No worries. Just like the S22 Ultra, this year's model keeps the S-Pen and in doing so, keeps all those power-using, note-taking, sketching and editing-on-the-fly customers happy.

Speaking of charging, although the battery hasn't actually got any bigger, with the right charger (wireless or not) the S23 Ultra not only juices up mighty quick, the battery life is off the charts too. Most nights when I pop it on to charge there's still 70% if not 80% left in the tank. In my experience, this is unheard of when it comes to the high-performance Ultra models of the past.

The credit for this golden new age of power preservation goes mostly to the chip; the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy. At the risk of geeking out a bit, it's only in the last two years we've seen New Zealand S-Series phones ship with Snapdragon chips rather than Samsung's own Exynos versions. The Snapdragons have always been widely considered to be superior to their Exynos counterparts so that's good news for us.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is effectively the most advanced phone chip available today and the fact this version of it seems to have been customised specifically to Samsung's new S23 range suggests even an even further bump in performance. As I keep saying, premium performance should be a minimum expectation from a $2K+ handset but the S23 Ultra doesn't just meet the benchmarks, it blazes past them.

This makes it a phenomenal mobile gaming device, especially when you take its first-class display and finely-tuned audio system into account. I daresay the variable refresh rate - from 120Hz right down to 1Hz helps preserve battery life too.

The other major headline here is the camera setup. For the first time, Samsung has included a 200MP wide-angle sensor alongside the 12MP ultra-wide and the 10.0/10.0 telephoto shooters. The importance of that whizzy processor can't be ignored here as well of course - it takes a whole heap of brainpower to instantly compare thousands of pixels to come up with the most detailed, accurate and sharp photos ever seen on a phone camera - even in questionable lighting conditions.

Samsung calls this "Nightography," and the all-new Adaptive Pixel sensor does an unbelievable job of bringing photos shot in near-darkness to life. The selfie camera on the S23 Ultra has also lifted its game, now featuring fast auto-focus and upgrading front-facing video from 30fps to 60fps. Yes, that means you can now shoot instantly uploadable, professional-looking content from your front-facing camera.

Every year Samsung seems to boost the Ultra's digital stabilisation abilities and 2023 is no different. I'm not sure I'd recommend using such an expensive phone to film action content when running, biking or even motoring - but as you'll see from the video below, thanks to the doubled Optical Image Stabiliser, now even cyclones won't shake things up too much.

In short, if you thought the S23 Ultra looked just like the S22 Ultra, you're not wrong. If you thought there weren't significant upgrades between the two, you are. Battery life, camera performance and the sheer power and efficiency from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy are instantly impressive - but that's not even the point.

There can't be too many people who can afford to swap out a high-end performance handset like this every generation. In fact, recent data suggests most people are hanging onto their phones longer than ever before upgrading; for three or even four years. Compare this phone with an S20 Ultra 5G or perhaps even an S10+ from the year before that and you'll find they're worlds apart. In terms of durability, battery life, camera options and out and out performance, what the S23 Ultra brings to the table puts it in a whole other league - and perhaps justifiably, in a whole other price bracket too.

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.