Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: A 200MP camera, custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Gorilla Glass Victus 2

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Just shy of a full year on from them launching the Galaxy S22 Ultra, Samsung has now showcased their newest flagship smartphone to the world: the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Similar to the previous generation, the Galaxy S23 series packs the base model Galaxy S23, a larger Galaxy S23+ and a Galaxy S23 Ultra too, with the latter of course being more akin to the Galaxy Note devices of yesteryear. You can check out our coverage of the Galaxy S23 and S23+ here, but for now we’re going to take a look at the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

When stood next to its stablemates, the Galaxy S23 Ultra certainly looks a lot different than the other two, but it is fact very similar to last last year’s Galaxy S22 Ultra. It keeps the same design philosophy here, with the flat edges on top and bottom and the curved edges though the curves are now ever so slightly less aggressive than before. Specifically, you’re looking at a 6.8-inch, QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X curved edge display with an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. It’s also capable of a 1750nits of peak brightness, with Vision Booster, Enhanced Comfort and HDR10+ support too. All of this gets covered in a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2, making it one of the first smartphones to use this glass.

Under the hood, you’re getting the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 system-on-chip, but this isn’t the regular run of the mill Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that we first saw debut in November last year that is in the likes of the iQoo 11 5G. Instead, this is a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy, an overclocked version of Qualcomm’s flagship mobile processor. The prime CPU core is clocked at a higher 3.36GHz instead of the usual 3.2GHz, while the Adreno GPU is also clocked faster now at 719MHz.

You’ll also find 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM as standard across the board, with up to 1TB of the new UFS 4.0 storage standard. The Galaxy S23 Ultra also comes with Android 13 out of the box, running Samsung’s One UI 5.1 skin over it. Users can also expect four major Android OS upgrades, as well as five years of security patches.

As for the cameras, the Galaxy S23 Ultra features perhaps Samsung’s best camera setup on a smartphone yet. It packs a rear quad camera setup, with the star of the show being the 200MP, f/1.7 camera using the Samsung ISOCELL HP2 sensor with Adaptive Pixel that uses pixel binning to support multiple levels of high resolution photography. This gets flanked by a 12MP, f/2.2 ultrawide camera, a 10MP, f/2.4 telephoto camera for 3x optical zoom and a 10MP, f/4.9 telephoto camera offering 10x optical zoom, with Samsung’s 100x Space Zoom making a return here too.

There’s a host of new features here, with improved Nightography for low light photography and videos with doubled optical image stabiliser angles in all directions, Astrophoto and Astro Hyperlapse photography and videography for taking shots of the night sky as well as Samsung’s new Expert RAW app for shooting and editing in RAW. Up front, the old 40MP selfie shooter on the Galaxy S22 Ultra has been replaced with a new 12MP, f/2.2 front facing camera with autofocus and Super HDR.

Elsewhere, there’s a 5,000mAh battery keeping the lights on with 45W fast charging that Samsung claims is able to charge up the Galaxy S23 Ultra to 65% in just 30 minutes, along with 15W wireless charging and reverse wireless charging too. You’ll also find stereo speakers, an in-display fingerprint sensor, Samsung Knox, an IP68 dust and water resistance rating as well as support for 5G, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 and NFC connectivity.

Lastly, we can’t mention the Galaxy S23 Ultra without also a word about the S Pen. It retains the S Pen silo on the bottom of the device, and when paired with Samsung Notes and Google Meet, Galaxy S23 Ultra users can use the stylus to simultaneously co-edit a document instead of sharing their screens. This is on top of the Samsung Multi Control feature that syncs up your smartphone with your Samsung tablet and computer.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra is a pretty hefty smartphone though, coming in at 234g and measuring 8.9mm thick. Available in Phantom Black, Cream, Green and Lavender colour options (there are also online-exclusive Lime, Sky Blue, Graphite and Red options), the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra will start at RM5,699, with more pricing and availability details to follow.