It’s been over a year since the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra was released. Since then, hundreds of flagship phones from other companies have been released, but the S22 Ultra still remains a house hold name in the premium segment even with the release of the S23 lineup.
As it had been a norm in the Samsung community, the Galaxy Note was always unveiled in their August event until 2021. Most had already given up on the Note but Samsung was brewing a far much more interesting product. Last year, they merged the edgy and boxy design of the Note with the sleekness of the top-of-the-line S series to produce the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.
By now, I think it is safe to say that the Note is gone but its relevant features live on. Jokes aside, this device has one of the most impressive specs and it will definitely be a benchmark for other phones in the course of the year.
Specs.
- Gorilla Glass Victus + both at the front and back with an Aluminum Chassis.
- 6.8” LTPO Dynamic AMOLED 2X display
- 120Hz refresh rate
- 1750 nits of max brightness with HDR 10+
- Android 12 with One UI 4.1
- Exynos 2200 or the Snapdragon 8 gen 1
- 2.8ms latency stylus
- 8GB RAM/ 128GB storage
- 12GB RAM/256GB/ 512GB/ 1TB Storage
- 108MP (wide lens), 10MP (Periscope telephoto lens), 10MP (Telephoto lens), 12MP 120˚ (ultrawide lens)
- 40MP (wide) selfie camera
- NO 3.5mm headphone jack
- USB Type C 3.2 port
- IP68 Water and Dust resistance
- Bluetooth 5.2
- Under display Ultrasonic Fingerprint sensor
- Li-Ion 5000WmAh battery.
- Up to 45W fast wired charging.
- 15W Wireless Charging
- 4.5W reverse wireless charging
- Colors: Phantom Black, White, Burgundy, Green, Graphite, Red, Sky Blue
- Starts from around 148,000KSH ($1149)
Design Language.
As we have come to expect from Samsung’s designs, they are second to none. Both the front and back end of this phone are covered by the tough Gorilla Glass Victus+ giving the phone a much premium feeling. The frame is covered in Aluminum adding a touch of elegance to the device.
Much like any premium Samsung device, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra comes with an LTPO 120Hz AMOLED display. This simply translates to a vibrant picture quality coupled with a fluid experience due to the faster refresh rate. There has been a lot of confusion as to whether this device supports dynamic refresh rate and the simple answer is that it does. This is due to the LTPO technology which Samsung refers to as HOP (Hybrid oxide and polycrystalline silicon). The reason behind this is partly because Apple has a patent on the LTPO technology since they are the ones who first developed it.
It is also worth mentioning that they bumped up the brightness level from 1500 nits as if it was not enough, to a mind blowing 1750 nits. To put this into perspective, Apple’s top of the line Iphone 13 Pro Max has a peak brightness of 1000 nits. This simply translates to a clear reading experience even in bright sunlight outdoors.
The Cameras are pretty much similar to the S21 Ultra with the only significant difference being the cut-out layout. On last year’s model it had a squared off design, while this year, they decided to provide a cut out layer for each camera lens. It got some mixed reactions, with some people totally hating it. I think it is far much better than the S21 Ultra’s squared off design. I guess it’s just a matter of personal preference.
As for the colors, Samsung never disappoints especially on the Ultra Models. This year we have 7 different color choices to choose from ranging from Black, White, Burgundy, Green, Graphite, Red to my all-time favorite, the Sky Blue.
What is LTPO?
As mentioned earlier, LTPO technology gives an edge to these premium phones especially in battery life. LTPO is just a fancier way of referring to dynamic refresh rate, meaning the display can switch between 120HZ when doing tasks such as scrolling and gaming and 1Hz when the screen is still. In full it stands for Low Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide. It was first developed by Apple hence they have patent rights meaning no other company can use the name without Apple’s authorization. This is partly the reason why Samsung refers to theirs as HOP (Hybrid Oxide and Polycrystalline silicon).
Most OLED displays, use LTPS (Low temperature Polysilicon) in their manufacture of TFT (Thin Film Transistors) which form the back panel of the display. This allows for the refresh rate to be switched either between 120Hz or 60Hz but not in between or below. Although this has proven to increase battery life by about 30% it is still not as good as LTPO display.
In order to enable dynamic refresh rate, meaning the device can switch from 120Hz to 1Hz automatically there is an extra step needed. For LTPO devices, a combination of LTPS TFTs and TFTs made from Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide are used. This results in the IGZO TFTs driving the display while the LTPS TFTs controlling the switching circuits. So, there you have it.
The S pen is back.
The S pen has always been the back bone of the Note series. Without it, the Note is more or less an S series phone. Last year on the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, was the first time we saw an S device support the S pen but there was one flaw to this. It did not have an in built cut out for the S pen. This meant that it was far more likely to get lost and in addition to this, one had to buy it separately.
This year things changed, and the S pen is finally back with an in built cut out for it. Although it only comes in one color; black irrespective of your phone color, functionality is still the same if not better. All the cool S pen features like smart select are still there which is amazing to see.
One notable difference in this S pen is the latency. Since the screen has a refresh rate of 120Hz, Samsung managed to reduce its latency from 9 milliseconds which was already fast to a whooping 2.8 milliseconds. This simply means that the writing or drawing experience is more or less in real time meaning no lag whatsoever.
Snapdragon 8 gen 1 or Exynos 2200.
Samsung has us hyped when they announced that they would be working with AMD on the next Exynos chip to produce a performance-oriented chip. This took the whole tech industry by storm but does it actually leave up to the hype. The Exynos 2200 with the AMD GPU made its first debut In the Samsung Galaxy S22 series. In order to understand partly why everyone was excited by this collaboration, let’s take a step back to the how this beef between Exynos and Snapdragon begun.
You have to first of all understand that Samsung is a major player in the smartphone market. Being in the major league, we expect nothing but the best all the way from performance to the build quality across the board. Samsung managed to balance everything except from performance. This is because some markets like in the US receive the high-performance Qualcomm Snapdragon chips while other markets like Europe receive Samsung’s own Exynos chip.
For the longest time, Exynos chips have always been inferior to the Snapdragon. What this means is that a Samsung Galaxy S20 bought in the US has significantly more performance than one bought in the European market. This has always ignited a spark across the internet but as years went by, Exynos was closing the gap. So, when we heard about Samsung’s collaboration with AMD, we knew that this was the moment we had all been waiting for.
Long story short, despite Samsung working with AMD on the Exynos 2200, there is still more work to be done. Don’t get me wrong, the Exynos 2200 is way better than it has ever been but it is by no means a generational leap. In single score performance, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 managed to beat the Exynos chip by a very small margin but in Multicore performance, the Qualcomm chip finally gets a beating. It’s nice to see the gap getting thinner and thinner but there is still more room for improvement.
Final thoughts.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is definitely a good device. In fact, it’s one of the best in its class taking on devices in its category like the Iphone 13 Pro Max. The good design coupled with flagship specs makes it the best phone of 2022 so far. The S pen further adds icing on the cake reviving the Galaxy Note spirit once more. If you loved the previous Note devices, this one will definitely impress you. What are your thoughts on this?
