Review cover Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Smartphone (Hardware)
Official GBAtemp Review

Product Information:

Another year, another flagship phone release from the major mobile manufacturers! Today we take a look at the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra!

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

What We Liked ...
  • 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
What We Didn't Like ...
  • Camera shutter lag quite noticeable with zoom lenses
  • No 3.5mm jack
  • No expandable storage
9.5
out of 10

Overall

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is an incredibly capable smartphone that excels as a mobile emulation device, a capable camera with limited professional tools, and a daily driver smartphone. Those in the market for an upgrade would be hard pressed to find themselves disappointed with this device.
Ohhh that camera design on the back is so much better than the giant rectangle on the back of the 20 line...
Honestly this has been one of my favorite design features, especially coming from the full blown protruding square that is the iPhone camera
 
I'm getting this or the whatever the latest pixel is when I'm due for an upgrade at this point tbh.
Same here, I don't usually go for Samsung, but this one's pretty tempting. I'd go for the next Pixel, but I was a little underwhelmed with the 6 Pro I had. Nice phone, but I bought into the hype.
 
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They keep getting worse year after year. Damn, even Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei got better. Shame on you Samsung. I still have my Samsung Galaxy S20 Note Ultra 5G. Happy and content with it
 
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I was using a Galaxy S9+ for the last four or so years, and I wanted to upgrade late last year because I wasn't getting firmware updates anymore; I waited until the newest model - this one - was out, and I actually managed to get mine several days early (bought it online from JB Hi-Fi).

I must say, I love this phone. It's so bright, and the cameras are great too. The only real criticism compared to my S9+ is that some of the old alert sounds are no longer available, so I had to switch to new ones, and that's just minor.

Sure, the lack of a 3.5mm jack is occasionally annoying, as to use wired headphones I need to use an adapter, but I'm not really one to use headphones with my phone - I don't listen to music often, and watching YouTube is something I'd rather do on one of my laptops (using Wi-Fi, not mobile data). The supposed lens lag...I haven't zoomed in enough to really notice it, so that could be a thing, I dunno.

And the inability to increase storage...I got the 512 GB option, and even after transferring everything over from my old phone and taking plenty of new photos and stuff, I've only used up 115 GB - I've got no need for more storage, and if I do in future I can just delete the likely hundreds of old, unneeded photos (photos of university slides and duplicate photos and stuff) that I've been too lazy to delete thus far.
Still, including a microSD slot would've been a great pro-customer move, I can't argue against that, since not everyone will be able to afford the 512 GB model.
 
I am on Samsung phones since Galaxy S, and even earlier. I would not dare to use an iphone.
Nowadays phones are excellent in everything.
 
How are they getting worse, pray tell? I don't really understand.
No expandable storage, no headphone jack, no user replaceable battery, too big to use comfortably in one hand, and all of that at a massivly inflated price point. Unless the mid-range has finally caught up, Samsung still doesn't have a worthy successor to the Galaxy S10. Iterative improvements to CPU, memory capacity, and the camera just aren't enough to make up for the price point and features that we have lost.

At least there is still a bit of competition left in Android. ASUS's ZenFone 8 for example still offers a small sized affordable phone with a headphone jack and modern specs. Still no expandable storage though.
 
No expandable storage, no headphone jack, no user replaceable battery, too big to use comfortably in one hand, and all of that at a massivly inflated price point. Unless the mid-range has finally caught up, Samsung still doesn't have a worthy successor to the Galaxy S10. Iterative improvements to CPU, memory capacity, and the camera just aren't enough to make up for the price point and features that we have lost.

At least there is still a bit of competition left in Android. ASUS's ZenFone 8 for example still offers a small sized affordable phone with a headphone jack and modern specs. Still no expandable storage though.

I had this conversation with someone here last week. In your defense Samsung could have put a SD slot in the phone but they didn't. I've been having my S23 for a week and I didn't have the need for a SD card because I'm not putting junk on my phone.

Headphone jack got tossed in 2017 thank apple for that.

Pictures just use a dongle and put them on the SD card but cloud is a million times better. Google One is $.99 for 100gb.

Videos just put them on the dongle.

I have a S23 with 5 PS2 games , 5 PSP games , 5 PS1 games , 9 N64 games, 20 DS games , 2 game cube games , and including the SNES, GBA, GBC, Sega , MAME (Neo Geo)

And I STILL have 170+ GB left from w 256gb card. So TRUST ME it is more than enough.

Your phone isn't really ment to store collections on them it's just nowadays you have to utilize your space more better.
 
No expandable storage, no headphone jack, no user replaceable battery, too big to use comfortably in one hand, and all of that at a massivly inflated price point. Unless the mid-range has finally caught up, Samsung still doesn't have a worthy successor to the Galaxy S10. Iterative improvements to CPU, memory capacity, and the camera just aren't enough to make up for the price point and features that we have lost.

At least there is still a bit of competition left in Android. ASUS's ZenFone 8 for example still offers a small sized affordable phone with a headphone jack and modern specs. Still no expandable storage though.
In addition to what Goku said, "no user replaceable battery"? Do ANY phones these days have that?
It's not exactly fair to criticise only Samsung for it when it's the standard these days, and allowing users to replace internals would require making the phones less slim - the internals can't be as densely packed.

Oh, and I can very comfortably use my phone with one hand; I've never had any issues with that.
 
In addition to what Goku said, "no user replaceable battery"? Do ANY phones these days have that?
It's not exactly fair to criticise only Samsung for it when it's the standard these days, and allowing users to replace internals would require making the phones less slim - the internals can't be as densely packed.

Oh, and I can very comfortably use my phone with one hand; I've never had any issues with that.

It's all for greed...

Removed headphone jack to push sales for airpods and other assesseriees.

Removed SD card to push more sales for 256, 512, and 1TB models

Removed the charging brick to make you buy one separately.

Phone companies: We removed the charging brick for the environment but BTW the box we ship it in is two times the size of the slim case. The brick you have at home charges bur you need to buy our charger separately if you want faster speed (which also will need to be put in a box)

So on and so forth. It's all a greed game each year they take something away.
 
No expandable storage, no headphone jack, no user replaceable battery, too big to use comfortably in one hand, and all of that at a massivly inflated price point. Unless the mid-range has finally caught up, Samsung still doesn't have a worthy successor to the Galaxy S10. Iterative improvements to CPU, memory capacity, and the camera just aren't enough to make up for the price point and features that we have lost.

At least there is still a bit of competition left in Android. ASUS's ZenFone 8 for example still offers a small sized affordable phone with a headphone jack and modern specs. Still no expandable storage though.
The S10 doesn't have a removable battery. Neither does the S9. Neither does the S8. The last phone to have a removeable battery was the S7.
 
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The S10 doesn't have a removable battery. Neither does the S9. Neither does the S8. The last phone to have a removeable battery was the S7.
Yup, and I think that's a key part of why innovation has stopped in the last few years. No matter how much better your old phone is, you have to buy an overpriced new one eventually.
 
They keep getting worse year after year. Damn, even Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei got better. Shame on you Samsung. I still have my Samsung Galaxy S20 Note Ultra 5G. Happy and content with it
If you use a Chinese smartphone, you are a moron.
 
You don't get it, that's a zero day exploit that was just discovered and there are more that are being used by hackers and nobody knows of them yet
To be fair, this can apply to nearly anything. If we avoided devices just because a zero day was found, we might as well start sending letters in the mail instead of using a phone.
 
To be fair, this can apply to nearly anything. If we avoided devices just because a zero day was found, we might as well start sending letters in the mail instead of using a phone.
Couldn't letters just be physically stolen? Mailboxes aren't the most secure things, after all.
Or the letter or parcel could be delivered to the wrong house, lost, damaged...
 
If you use a Chinese smartphone, you are a moron.
...Aren't almost all phones made in China due to extremely cheap sweatshop labour (that should really be a global crime, but CCP is shit at human rights)?
You're basically calling damn-near everyone a moron.
 
Yup, and I think that's a key part of why innovation has stopped in the last few years. No matter how much better your old phone is, you have to buy an overpriced new one eventually.
Eh, that's your opinion.
Mine? While I don't see any point in replacing phones on an annual basis, upgrading every four/five years is just fine, if you feel you need to - by then, enough things would be different to justify it.
 
It's a few steps backwards from my S21 Ultra 5G, so I'll skip this model too. I usually skip 2 or 3 models anyways, until my battery stops lasting a full day at work. That way the upgrade feel like it's more than a speedbump, it feels like you upgraded from a VIC20 to an Amiga 500.
 
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To be fair, this can apply to nearly anything. If we avoided devices just because a zero day was found, we might as well start sending letters in the mail instead of using a phone.
If we consider your logic, even tho I know that Linux is relatively safer than windows for instance, I will still used windows for financial transactions cause zero day stuff can happen anyway ... Humm not so smart
 
Lack of headphone jack and expandable storage slot, not to mention lack of separate bixby button, are preventing me from upgrading from my Note 9. I have fully remapped my bixby button using an app called bxactions to make it do anything I want, can't imagine not having a remappable button now.
 
Lack of headphone jack and expandable storage slot, not to mention lack of separate bixby button, are preventing me from upgrading from my Note 9. I have fully remapped my bixby button using an app called bxactions to make it do anything I want, can't imagine not having a remappable button now.
I did the same with my note 9. Though when I upgraded to my Note 22 I very quickly forgot I ever had the bixby button. The headphone thing I for sure understand the annoyance. Don't expect it to ever return though. I just picked up a cheap $20 pair of bluetooth earbuds and have been using those since.
 
No SD Card slot, no deal.
Samsung dropped the SD card slot on the S6, going forward... Which really sucks, because that's how I'd transfer my music to a new phone. Weird that they brought it back for the S7, just to axe it again on the S8 going forward. I miss it. USB C external storage isn't nearly as convenient, and NTFS STILL isn't supported for whatever reason by the default kernel.
 
If we consider your logic, even tho I know that Linux is relatively safer than windows for instance, I will still used windows for financial transactions cause zero day stuff can happen anyway ... Humm not so smart
If we're being pedantic, sure. All I'm getting at is that there will always be a zero day, so this is not something to decide whether to avoid the phone or not. A secure device is just one that hasn't had its vulnerabilities discovered yet, all that matters is how they respond to it when they are found. In this case it has already been patched partially, with more patches coming in April.
 
Lack of headphone jack and expandable storage slot, not to mention lack of separate bixby button, are preventing me from upgrading from my Note 9. I have fully remapped my bixby button using an app called bxactions to make it do anything I want, can't imagine not having a remappable button now.
I don't use Bixby, so them removing that useless button for me was a godsend.
 
I don't use Bixby, so them removing that useless button for me was a godsend.
Like I explained, I don't use bixby. I quite clearly explained, and I quote, "I have fully remapped my bixby button using an app called bxactions to make it do anything I want."

That doesn't use bixby. You cannot do what I did, aka "fully remap [the] bixby button" using bixby. Them removing the button thus is not a godsend.

I hold my bixby button to toggle the flashlight, press once to play/pause, press twice to skip song, press twice+hold for previous song, and when the device is locked, all the same except the flashlight toggles the camera flash (aka a brighter flashlight).

I love being able to just pull my phone out of my pocket, hold the bixby button for a second, and use the flashlight when in a pinch, then turn it back off just as easily, without having to turn on the screen and tap a button.

If you don't like having an extra, fully remappable button, that's your problem. I fail to see even a single downside to having an additional, fully remappable button on any device. Don't want it? Simply don't map anything to it. :)

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No SD slot.
No headphones jack.
A non removable explosive masquerading as a battery, because that's what Samsung is into nowadays.
And not least of all, no avenues to root the phone, so you could get rid of all the irredeemable levels of bloat.

Even from the heyday of smart phones in 2007, Samsung always had great hardware, ruined by garbage software. But because early models were dead easy to root, all of that was forgivable.

Between becoming obnoxiously tough to root, the recessions in usability, and of course the explosive batteries, Samsung hasn't done anything to warrant lifting their ban from my business at any price.
 
If we consider your logic, even tho I know that Linux is relatively safer than windows for instance, I will still used windows for financial transactions cause zero day stuff can happen anyway ... Humm not so smart
I like how you proved your own point
 
No SD slot.
No headphones jack.
A non removable explosive masquerading as a battery, because that's what Samsung is into nowadays.
And not least of all, no avenues to root the phone, so you could get rid of all the irredeemable levels of bloat.

Even from the heyday of smart phones in 2007, Samsung always had great hardware, ruined by garbage software. But because early models were dead easy to root, all of that was forgivable.

Between becoming obnoxiously tough to root, the recessions in usability, and of course the explosive batteries, Samsung hasn't done anything to warrant lifting their ban from my business at any price.
explosive batteries is a weird issue to bring up since that hasn't been a problem since the S7 which was all the way back in 2015
 
explosive batteries is a weird issue to bring up since that hasn't been a problem since the S7 which was all the way back in 2015
It should have been the wake-up call.
The right way to have handled that, was to either:
  • back-pedal, return to removable batteries, which would have greatly reduced the scope of the defects
  • cancel the product line in the interest of public safety
What did samsung do? Repackage those that weren't purposely destroyed in the recall, flash a new firmware and re-sell them in India. Like somebody wasn't going to notice something was up with this mess!

Like that model of phone hasn't been effectively banned in every airport, ever.

The absolute, bald-faced gall to choose to do that, is sickening. And I've banned Samsung from consideration ever since.
 
It should have been the wake-up call.
The right way to have handled that, was to either:
  • back-pedal, return to removable batteries, which would have greatly reduced the scope of the defects
  • cancel the product line in the interest of public safety
What did samsung do? Repackage those that weren't purposely destroyed in the recall, flash a new firmware and re-sell them in India. Like somebody wasn't going to notice something was up with this mess!

Like that model of phone hasn't been effectively banned in every airport, ever.

The absolute, bald-faced gall to choose to do that, is sickening. And I've banned Samsung from consideration ever since.
they straight up halted the sales of the Note 7 after a recall so it pretty much was a wake-up call to them??? which is why you don't hear about it on their new S23 line, or any of their recent devices lately

I wish I could say that li-poly batteries have a zero failure rate. I wish we could say that about anything made by humans

but it would be reductive to just blame Samsung specifically on this, this could happen with any manufacturer. You have to consider that everyday we're all technically carrying potential firecrackers in our pockets and knowing the huge volumes they sell I'm amazed this doesn't happen much more often. I honestly can't say one manufacturer is safer than another in this regard. Even Apple had a rash of exploding phones a decade back
 
I've been a fan of the Note series for many years because of the stylus, and it's good that they didn't remove it. It's big, but it feels good in the hand. It is convenient to work with any documents, good mobilespecs. net communication quality is ok, the hardware is flying, the screen is a bomb, a top camera, the potential of which will not be revealed by every user. The zoom and low-light shooting are excellent, sometimes you can use it instead of binoculars). The battery holds super, compared to Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra. Bright screen for working in the sun.
 
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  1. Xiaomi has just launched its latest smartphone line, the Xiaomi 14 series. In this series, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is the top-of-the-line model, with a focus on photography and a dedicated Photography Kit to complement this focus. Let’s take a closer look!

  2. Obsidian’s Pentiment is part of a new wave of Xbox games coming to other platforms. Should you try to solve the 16th century murder mystery it presents?

  3. The second iteration of Supernote's compact e-ink notebook, we check out the A6X2 Nomad!

  4. Acting like an NPC has never been more intense

  5. The Aurvana Ace by Creative might look like your regular pair of wireless earbuds but it's the first to pack xMEMS’ solid-state silicon drivers. These are supposed to deliver richer, lifelike...

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