The first time I picked up Samsung’s new Galaxy s23 Ultra I thought oh no this is the first time in Samsung’s entire history where their Pinnacle Flagship the smartphone looks almost identical to theone that came before it same body same display the same battery Samsung has alwaysbeen the innovator and so the idea that this company has just gone an entirea year without being able to improve the core design from their last phone is scary because does that mean they fee llike they’ve perfected it is this just what all of their phones going to look like from now on plus how have theystill have not managed to trim that chin atthe bottom why the selfie camera has been demoted from 40 megapixels to just 12. why are the colors of the phone soboring and samey and most importantly why is it noticeably more expensive butnow that I’ve had some time to think about it, I’ve calmed down and I’ve learneda few important details about this phonethat have turned my fear and my disappointment into genuine excitementthe Galaxy s23 Ultra is worth yourattention and these are the 10 reasonswhy it takes better selfies while the resolution has been been downgraded from the s22 ultra thequality of the front camera has gone upleading to more accurate skin tones morereliable focusing and a little bit more detail the s23 ultra has more storage256 gigabytes versus 128 so while the price of Entry has gone up all the companies done is just slashedthe base level 128 gigabyte model thatyou used to be able to get which I don’tlove that it makes the phone even less accessible but I think it makes sense given that we’re talking about a media The centric phone that can shoot proper 8Kvideo I think it’s about time Samsungstopped pretending that 128 gigs ofnon-expandable storage is actually sufficient but the reason why I’m calling storage a win is that this is no ordinary 256 gigabytes this is the fastest flash memory in the world meaning that even compared to phonesfrom just a few months ago this thing can read and write files for almost two times faster while consuming less powerand all you have to do is to open up a few apps on your home screen to see thatextra responsiveness in action plus ifyou are off loading huge files directlyto your computer, you would feel it theretoo now Samsung’s also upgraded thespeakers which I think is quite important because this is something they haven’t touched since 2018 withthe Galaxy Note 9. used to be topof the game, Samsung used to have some ofthe best speakers that you could get ona phone and so I’m excited that they’retrying to reclaim the reputation they once had they bumped up the volume but what I think I’ll notice more is the bass the fullness it’s almost surprising you don’t expect this amount of it tocome out of a packageso tiny okay so as with every new Samsung phone you also get to play witha new piece of software so in this case of the s23 you get Samsung’s one UI 5.1skin based on Android 13. it’s a prettythin update you’re not gonna lie you get routines that can triggera series of actions based on your activities so whether you’re sleeping orexercising or driving Etc one cool thingwhich means that your Bixby assistant onthis phone can respond to incoming callsby just sending back a text and I knowBixby was a bit of a laughing stock whenit first came out but we tested itrecently and honestly it surprised meand clearly a lot of you guys too more importantly though when it comes to software is the key thing that has to be said that Samsung has become a bit of an unexpected hero with updates there was a time when buying a Samsung Flagship meant you’d get two years ofAndroid updates and you’d almost be one of the last to getthose updates but if you look at their current track record in the last couple of years something is getting out all ofthose smaller security patches faster than basically anyone and right out ofthe gate they’re also promising four full years of major Android version upgrade too so this phone is going to be supported to Android 17 which is a significant differentiator if you’re planning to keep the phone for that long okay it’stime to talk about this design and Iknow my first impression was to crymyself to sleep I just think it’s really good when companies try new things and historically if you could rely on any company to do that would be Samsung but has taken a step back and reallythought about it the similarity may notbe the worst thing I mean for starters no one’s upgrading their phone everysingle year anymore so this is stillgoing to feel new for someone upgrading from a two to three to four-year-old Samsung phone plus like I’ve tested aa lot of phones were from the outside they look like complete generation al leaps from their predecessors but then you use them and you almost feel cheated because they’re pretty much the exact same thing just in a new set of clothes so this phone looks similar to the last might help prevent that feeling and people feeling like theyneed to buy something that they don’t need but I think thethe most important thing and probably thethe real reason that Samsung kept the designthe language the same as to let their other phones catch up last year’s s22s were abit kooky that you had the s22 ultra which split the cameras into multiple individual modules like this and then the s22 and s22 plus which just had onebig camera module and so by this time keeping the design similar to the ultra model but updating the normal s23 ands23 plus they’ve now at least got a line up that looks cohesive but also if you look closer it is anupgraded design it’s a little boxier both the phone and the S Pen still comes included which I think is anaesthetic perk as well as a function alone because they’ve sharpened it up in athe way that the phone is more comfortable to hold instead of less comfy I guess I’m glad that they haven’t just copied Apple’s design like so many companies have they’ve retained some ofthe curve on the screen is good because it lets your fingers Glide ontothe display panel from the sides but they’ve made it somewhat less curved which means you get more usable flat area of the screen before it starts to slope off it’s a good careful balance and also Samsung swapped out the Corning gorilla glass victus plus thattheir phones used to be coated in for Gorilla Glass Victus 2 which is a really interesting material because it’s the the first time that this Corning company is acknowledging the fact that mostof the time when you drop your phoneit’s not from a perfect angle on some smooth laboratory floor phones need tobe able to with stand rough surfaces like concrete and there are some quite impressive test footage of it in action which I will not be recreating it’s noton purpose and they’ve managed toachieve that drop protection while alsomaking this display out of 22 recycled glass which is something that I did want to touch for a minute Samsung is making a real deal about their commitment to the environment and how this phone has parts from recycled waterbottles and fishing nets and recycled aluminum but there are plenty of greatreasons to buy these new phones I don’t think this is one of them like they talked about how they could may be theoretically reduce up to 15 Tons of waste plastic in the oceans by the endof the year but these are such tinynumbers in the scheme of things like Idid the math of this and this is thethe equivalent of Samsung for every 1 000 smartphone sold donating about 0.004 dollars for manual ocean cleanupso it’s great that they’re doing moreand more of this Eco stuff but I’m justsaying remember that if Eco is whatyou’re after the most eco-friendly thingis by far still to just buy a used oneor to not buy one okay so if you’ve beenfollowing Samsung’s phones at forthe last few years you’ll know thatcamera zoom has become a big part oftheir strategy well that’s better heretoosort of so if you look at the spec sheetyou won’t see a difference at all thes23 ultra’s got the same combination ofa three times optical zoom camera and a10 times optical zoom camera and thesame max range as last time of 100 timestotal Zoom but what I was told is thatthanks to the new processor in thisphone more on that in a minute it’ll beable to use powerful AI to still majorlystep up the end quality of the zoomshots so I tried it and I was surprisedto see that if anything my s22 ultra wasgetting slightly sharperresults so I tried it again the same thing Ieven looped in a Samsung employeethinking I was doing something wrong andwe ended up in this kind of hilariouskind of concerning situation where hesort of agreed that my s22 ultra shotdid look better so if what you’d bewanting to do is randomly zoom intoobjects and buildings hundreds of metersaway I don’t think the s23 ultra isgoing to do much more than the s22 ultrabut then we tested it on people and thethe difference was enormous I’mImagine this is where the AI in thethe new chip is doing its most work but Iwill test this properly in a camera testcoming soon so if you do want to see a100-time zoom shot at Milo’s nostrilsthen a sub to the channel would be sensational. now this leads us to the elephant in theroom that I imagine will become thethe entire tagline of the s23 ultra it’s 200megapixel main camera this is a reallyimportant jump but not for the reasonDo you think she trying to takefull 200-megapixel photos from a tinya camera like this is generally going tobe a pretty fruitless exercise eachphoto is going to end up as a 50megabyte file but even with thatcompared to a proper 200 megapixelthe camera that would look something morelike this you just can’t get enoughlight into a mini phone one to fill that200 megapixels of resolution with realdetail the actual perk of this sensorcomes into play with something calledpixel binning there’s a good chanceyou’ve heard of it but it’s the idea ofindividual smaller noisier pixels beinggrouped and collating all oftheir information into fewer biggercleaner pixels with the 108 megapixelthe main camera on the previous s22 Ultrawhat Samsung was doing is clumpingtogether pixels into three by threegrids which mean your end photos have aninth of the total pixel count is around 12megapixels or 2 12 million pixels butthat those are 12 million cleanpixels because each is made with theinformation from nine smaller pixels andso what’s interesting about this new 200the megapixel sensor is that it now gives ustwo really good options you can eitherstick to a 12-megapixel output but itwill now be an even cleaner 12 megapixeloutput because instead of each pixelbeing made of nine smaller pixels eachwill now be made of 16 smaller pixels oryou can divide your 200 million pixelsintofour so you’re still getting somewhatclean pixels each using the informationfrom four smaller pixels but you’re alsostill getting a high 50 megapixelresolution output which might be theperfect Middle Ground hopefully thatmade sense but if it didn’t then all youneed to know is that the s23 ultra isgoing to take really good photos andit’s not just a resolutionthing this new 200-megapixel camera alsohas a few fancy technical tricks thatlet it bring in even more light but theyare also even more complicated so I’llspell you the details and the singlethe thing that I think is going to make thethe biggest difference is that it can do allof this faster my three biggestcomplaints about past Samsung camerasare low-light performance videos and slowcapture time and so what’s reallyexciting is that even with more pixelsto be processed the newer camera iscapturing photos distinctly quicker thanits predecessor which is part of thethe reason why that face from earlier lookedso much more crisp but this is where itstarts dialing up because as it turnsout Samsung isn’t just addressing thiswonky weakness but all three ofits past camera’s key weaknesses so youknow how this camera can now make theseclusters of 16 pixels the biggest placewe’re going to notice that is in low light shots the lower the light thelower the quality of the information thateach pixel can pick up and sothe more benefit there is to multiplepixels grouping we’ve had a fewside-by-side low-light shots and thereis more texture and a littlebetter control over the super brightspots which are really important fornighttime cityscapes and so I actuallyguessed to see what was going to happenwhen you pair that with the new Astrophoto mode Samsung’s added thatoptimizes capturing Starry Skies nightsky shots are one of my favorite teststo run on any new phone and so knowingthat they’ve specifically optimized forit now this is where it starts to getjuicy the cherry on top is that Samsunghas also worked with Snapchat FacebookInstagram Tick Tock to integrate thisupdated night mode and the differentZoom cameras into those apps so that whenyou’re zooming in on Tick Tock forthe example you won’t just be using digitalZoom like you used to have to do andthen you guessed it Samsung seems tofinally, be getting serious when it comesto video too which benefits from thelight Gathering ability and fasterfocusing on the new sensor benefitsfrom the real-time noise reductionthanks to the higher intelligence ofthis new chip benefits from anoptical image stabilization system thathas two times the range of motion andtherefore the ability to stabilize comparedto last year if this ends up being asbig of a jump as it felt like in myfirst impressions I’ll be a very happyMan like Samsung’s video quality is oneof the only reasons that I constantlykeep an iPhone with me at all times Ispent a decent amount of time messingwith the new stabilization too and thisis a real jump this Rivals those propergimbal-stabilized cameras and objectsare noticeably less blurry in motionbecause of it oh yeah and the otherspin-off effect of this new cameraHardware is that 8K video is actuallyusable now it used to be capped at thequite janky looking 24 frames per secondand also not able to use the full camerasensor but now I can run a smooth 30frames per second which is the framea rate that this video is shot at andbecause the new sensor is not justbetter but also more suited for AK it’llfinally, be able to use the sensor’sthe entire area leading to a higher qualityless zoomed-in video this feels like theturning point to which many people willstart shooting their phone content in 8kI probably won’t but some definitelywill so what is even more important thanall of that well it’s this chip I’vebeen referencing the entire video forFor the last 10 years Samsung’s been fittingtheir phones with Snapdragon chips forthe US and India and then their ownin-house Exynos chips for Europe and Africa and it doesn’t seem to matter how much they tried or how many times they claimed to have finally fixed it Exynos was almost always a significantly worse chip in terms of both the battery lifeand the performance so the fact thatthis time around Samsung has finallyditched exynos giving every single s23purchaser of a brand new 2023 Snapdragon 8Gen 2 chip means that I can finally restin peace, Gen 2 chip means that I can finallysleep in peace for the first time in a decade to check out the 10 gadgets that I use everya single day of my life.