Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Smartphone (Hardware)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
Well folks. It happened. After twelve years of living in the Apple ecosystem of devices, this reviewer has finished breaking free of those corporate chains, in favor of a newer, shinier set. I got my first iPhone in 2011, an iPhone 4, and have been a dedicated consumer to that ecosystem of products. It was just last year that I used an Android device for the first time, with my review of the Xiaomi 12X smartphone. Ever since that review I found myself carrying double-devices consistently, eager to bring my emulation on the go with me and just all around enamored by the ease of use, and less-restrictive performance of the Android counterpart. So when it came time for me to upgrade my daily driver personal phone, the choice was clear; even if I still liked my iPhone, I was ready for something new. Enter the Galaxy S23 Ultra; Samsung’s latest top-of-the-line entry to their flagship lineup, promising top grade performance from their camera technology, as well as better overall performance from the latest Snapdragon CPU exclusive to the Galaxy line of phones. How does this latest device stack up? Let’s dive in, and take a look together!
Tech Specs
- Dimensions and Weight
- Dimensions: 78.1 x 163.4 x 8.9mm
- Weight: 233g
- Display
- 6.8” Edge QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X
- Infinity-O Display (3088 x 1440)
- 500ppi
- HDR10+ certified
- Up to 120Hz refresh rate
- Camera
- Front Camera
- 12MP 2PD AF
- Pixel size: 1.12μm
- FOV: 80˚
- F.No (aperture): F2.2
- Rear Cameras
- 12MP AF Ultra Wide Camera
- Pixel size: 1.4μm
- FOV: 120˚
- F.No (aperture): F2.2
- 200MP Wide Camera
- Pixel size: 0.6μm (12MP 2.4μm)
- FOV: 85˚
- F.No (aperture): F1.7
- 10MP Telephoto Camera
- Pixel size: 1.12μm
- FOV: 11˚
- F.No (aperture): F4.9
- 10MP Telephoto Camera
- Pixel size: 1.12μm
- FOV: 36˚
- F.No (aperture): F2.4
- Space Zoom
- 3x, 10x Dual Optical Zoom
- Super Resolution Zoom up to 100x
- OIS (Optical Image Stabilization)
- Laser AF
- Video Recording
- Resolution
- 8K video recording at 30fps (7680 x 4320)
- 8K video recording at 24fps (7680 x 4320)
- 4K UHD video recording at 60fps (3840 x 2160)
- 1080p FHD video recording at 60fps (1920 x 1080)
- 720p HD video recording at 30fps (1280 x 720)
- 4K HDR10+ video recording at 60fps (3840 x 2160)
- Shooting speed
- Super Steady QHD video support at 60fps
- Super Slow-mo 1080p video support at 960fps
- Portrait Video 4K video support at 30fps
- Slow motion 1080p video support at 240fps
- Hyperlapse 4K video support at 30fps
- Director's View 1080p Video support at 30fps
- Other
- High CRI LED Flash
- Tracking AF
- Astrolapse (Star trails) and front night Hyperlapse
- Auto Framing
- 60fps Super HDR
- VDIS (Video Digital Image Stabilization)
- Digital zoom up to 20x
- High Bitrate
- Performance
- Battery Capacity: 5,000mAh (typical)
- Charging:
- Fast Wireless Charging 2.0
- 45W/25W USB PD 3.0 (PPS) compliant Super Fast Charging for wired charging (AFC and QC2.0 compatible)
- *WPC certified Wireless charging
- Wireless PowerShare
- AP: Snapdragon® 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy
- 4㎚ 64-bit Octa-Core Processor * 3.36㎓ (Maximum Clock Speed) + 2.8㎓ + 2.0㎓
- Memory & Storage
- 12GB Memory with 1TB internal storage
- 12GB Memory with 512GB internal storage
- 12GB Memory with 256GB internal storage
- 8GB Memory with 256GB internal storage
- OS: Android 13
Full Galaxy S23 Line Tech Specs Available Here
Out of the Box
Cracking open the slate black monolith of a box, my first impressions focused mostly on the minimalism in the packaging, and contents of said package. I opted for the gray/black model, which stood out to me in the sleek, simplistic beauty of its design. All that came with in terms of accessories were the S-Pen, and a USB-C cable for charging and data transfer; a far cry from the days that a power brick or earbuds would come included with the device, but ultimately still offering everything that’s necessary to get going. No external storage slot or 3.5mm headphone jack on the phone was a disappointment, though not an unexpected one given the current market priorities for smartphones; but the tradeoff, there, is the unbelievably thin profile of the phone. This thing almost feels like a thin notebook with how flat and low-profile it is, and at less than half a pound in weight, it’d be easy to forget it’s even in my pocket if it weren’t for the width; in all, a sleek, lightweight package for what Samsung claims to be a pretty powerful phone.
As a daily use phone, the S23 Ultra is everything I could want and more. With 12 GB of memory and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor that’s been specifically optimized for the Galaxy line, navigation and general use between multiple apps, watching videos, and phone calls/texts worked like a dream, with the only limitation being my wifi or data signal strength. On the battery end of things, one might be concerned that with such a thin build they might have to skimp on the battery life, but I haven’t found that to be the case at all; no matter if I’m using the phone heavily for work and play, or lightly for general use, I had zero issues managing a full days worth of use on a single charge, only having to plug it in when sleeping to get it ready for the next day. And if you do need a bit more juice than that, the fast-charging compliance lets it go from near empty to full in about an hour with the right charger. The AMOLED screen offers a beautiful display for videos and photos, whether viewing or taking, and the 120hz refresh rate keeps everything moving smooth as butter, especially with mobile gaming. All told, when it comes to the basic needs of a daily driver smartphone? The performance is there in all the right spots.
Pro-Grade Camera?
Moving to the camera side of the phone, this is one of the areas that intrigued me most about the S23 Ultra. Samsung touts this as their best camera yet, offering pro-grade options for both photo and video to create content “worth sharing” immediately, with minimal editing out-of-phone needed. Starting on the video side, the basic camera has essentially everything you want for quick video creation; auto focus/exposure as a default, access to all pre-set focal lengths plus the ability to zoom up to 100x digitally between all lenses. You have access to all four basic resolutions (HD, Full HD, Ultra HD, and 8K) at 30 FPS, or 60 FPS for Full and Ultra, and some stabilization plus the ability to film in HDR for maximum quality retention. The Pro Video mode is where I was particularly impressed, though. Switching to this offers you access to 24 and 120 FPS at select resolutions, access to higher bitrate videos, and the ability to manually choose your shutter speed, ISO, focal point, white balance, and EV values. I work as a video specialist professionally, and found that the options offered on the S23 were pretty on par with what I find on my daily-use DSLR cameras, albeit to a much more limited extent. The video quality is solid, and inching ever closer to professional levels; and in the right hands (such as Ridley Scott, who directed a short film shot entirely on the S23 Ultra), it may as well be already there. The 8K video is particularly nice to have access to, being able to crop in pretty significantly with minimal quality loss. Personally I don’t see myself replacing my Sony A7SIII with this any time soon, but to have such a powerful, capable camera in a phone is both impressive and welcome to this reviewer.
On the photo end of things, I found there was plenty to be happy with here. The key selling point for photos is the 200 MP wide camera, which allows you to crop in pretty significantly on your photos without suffering quality loss. The up-to 100x digital zoom on this thing is also shockingly capable; I wouldn’t necessarily call the photos you can get from it “great,” but the quality that remains from photos taken is shockingly decent. Much like with video, pro photo options are available on the still camera, allowing you to use the 50 MP camera to take photos with the exact same customization options listed above for the video performance. You can also choose to record both JPEG and RAW photos, or either or, for maximum freedom in controlling your edits, or getting sharable photos without editing. I found that the overall quality of the still camera images was pretty impressive, and I was absolutely happy with the photos I was able to take with the phone; though, as I said with the video impressions, it’s certainly not going to be replacing a dedicated DSLR any time soon. But overall with both camera modes, I’m both impressed at what they can manage, and excited that such powerful photo and video devices are pretty easily available to your everyday consumer.
Emulation on the Go
One of the first things I did with this device was download Geekbench 6, to get an idea of what kind of processing power we’d be working with on both the GPU and CPU. You can take a look at the performance of specific levels below, but there were two major takeaways for me here; the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is doing work on the CPU end, with a multi-core score of over 5000, and the OpenCL API far outperformed Vulkan, with the latter only scoring in the mid-3000’s versus the former’s score of a Dragon Ball Z reference. This does make sense in practice, given OpenCL uses the host processor to assist in the process, but it is worth noting.
Now that we have a general idea of what the phone should be capable of, let’s put that into practice with a bit of emulation gaming. All games were tested using both OpenGL and Vulkan, and at their native settings to start. When particular games performed well, I began pushing these settings. I primarily tested GameCube and PS2 games, using the Dolphin Emulator and AetherSX2 respectively.
Let’s start on the GameCube side of things. My first emulation test came with a pleasant surprise in the form of Metroid Prime, a game I’ve had issues emulating on a phone in the past. While the Galaxy S23 Ultra didn’t provide a “perfect” experience of emulation with the game, it was absolutely passable. Most of the what I tested ran at a smooth 60 FPS, with only a few exceptions; if I got hit during the Parasite Queen boss, for example, I would occasionally drop to 50 FPS, and during a particularly intense section of the first level’s escape mission, I reached just above 40 FPS in a drop. When running with Vulkan, I also did notice significantly more frame drops. But even with those exceptions, I found the game to be exceptionally playable on the device. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess never reached past 30 FPS, but performed beautifully at that level for the entirety of my time with it. Even upscaling all the way to 4K gave minimal issues, though at this point frames did begin dropping at specific points. Though I did get Dolphin to crash while trying to climb a particularly high vine using Vulkan at 4K - where the same resolution using OpenGL only resulted in a minor frame drop. The biggest GameCube surprise came from F-Zero GX, a game notorious for being taxing on emulators. The S23 Ultra ran F-Zero with few issues, rarely dipping below 60 FPS in performance, even with a 1080p upscale.
Moving to the PS2, here’s where some bigger issues came. A disclaimer to note here, I’m running AetherSX2, which was recently put on indefinite hiatus by the developer, so some of these issues may absolutely stem from the chosen game simply not being viable with the surviving build. I started my test with Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, which gave mixed results to say the least. Cutscenes would inconsistently either perform as intended at 60 FPS, or tank by half and slug along. GamePlay more consistently ran at a sloggy pace, but did occasionally spike to intended levels of performance. TimeSplitters 2, meanwhile, performed shockingly well for the entirety of my time with it, able to run consistently and smoothly at a 2x native resolution upscale. God of War was much the same, which wasn’t surprising at all to me considering how well it ran on my previous review of a significantly weaker phone.
In all, the emulation performance on this phone definitely did its work to impress, in my opinion. For something that literally fits in your pocket and can be easily accessed wherever you are? I find the performance to be more than capable, and far above “acceptable.”
All told, as of the writing of this review I’ve been using the phone for about a month as my daily driver, and I personally couldn’t be happier with my switch. On a daily use front, the battery life, call quality, and ease of use have all been exactly what I would hope for, and expect, from a brand new flagship phone. Having a library of rom backups available on my in my pocket for easy play has also been quite nice, as has been having a nearly pro-grade camera to capture life’s moments in mere moments, rather than having to haul my dedicated camera to every event. Some may find that the features added on this latest model of Samsung aren’t quite enough to justify a jump from the previous years S22 Ultra, but I still find this to be a phone that most anyone could be happy to have in their hands.
Verdict
- Excellent camera options for photo and video
- Sleek design
- Solid battery life
- Powerful processing unit
- Easily integrated as a daily use cell phone
- Great emulation performance
- Camera shutter lag quite noticeable with zoom lenses
- No 3.5mm jack
- No expandable storage