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00:00Let's talk about this the galaxy s23 ultra because I've been using this as my main everyday phone for a little over a week
00:06Now and while you've probably already watched a million videos on this guy
00:10I have some thoughts as well because having taken it around San Francisco after Samsung's unpacked launch event and then to LA for a few
00:17days including to the Grammys where I had a little behind-the-scenes tour during rehearsals and also I got to attend the
00:23Producers and engineering awards which was a whole lot of fun
00:26And by the way, all these shots were taken on the s23
00:30So after taking about a billion photos playing some games throwing some benchmarks and keeping an eye on the battery life
00:36What do I think so far? Well, it's really good. I mean you'd hope so right for
00:411250 pounds it is an awful lot of money. Although technically they haven't increased the price compared to last year
00:47This is the s22 ultra is what I made earlier. And what they've done is dropped the cheaper 128 gig storage option
00:53So now it starts at 256. Although same 8 gigs of RAM or be it faster
00:58LPDDR5 X RAM and also faster UFS for storage, but for the same
01:021250 pound price as last year's 256 gig model and actually Samsung do have some deals on the s23 right now
01:09Including doubling your storage for free and I'll leave a link below if you do want to check that out compared to the
01:14iPhone 14 pro max for the same storage 256 gigs. This is actually 70 pounds cheaper
01:20So on the one hand, yes, they haven't increased the price
01:22But it's a higher starting point and it is a lot of money and there's a lot of strong competition to this the iPhone 14
01:28Pro max and also the new Vivo X 90 Pro and then on the slightly cheaper end with the pixel 7 Pro or even this
01:34The new one plus 11 which starts at seven to nine here in the UK or six nine nine dollars
01:39Yes, this has a better camera and the s-pen and a few more bells and whistles
01:42But they share the same chip and this is 500 quid cheaper
01:46It's a hard upsell
01:48But putting that to one side the headline upgrades with the s23 ultra include the faster chip the upgraded cameras and also
01:55Surprisingly the better battery life. Those are the big three, but as well as that the speakers are also a lot better
02:00They're louder richer. We get more bass and side-by-side even though it's a little bit tricky to show on a YouTube video like this
02:06It's a noticeable step up
02:08Carefully
02:14Less obvious but an upgrade nonetheless is Gorilla Glass 2 now protecting the front and back
02:19Which is a little bit more scratch and fracture resistant than Victus Plus that we had before
02:24They've also reduced the size of the curve on the edge of the screen by 30%
02:28So more of the screen is flat and they've slightly tweaked the design
02:31The corners are a little bit less rounded than before and it does feel a bit more
02:35Boxy to hold versus even last year's s22 ultra and they've shifted the layout of the buttons a little bit
02:41So yes, you do have to buy a new case
02:441250 quid and you don't even get a charger or a case
02:47They may know how to squeeze you for every penny from the outside. Not much has changed
02:51But don't let that fool you. This is a big upgrade
02:54Let's talk about this chip the snapdragon 8 gen 2 and the good news as you probably know by now
02:59Is that all s23 models around the world get the 8 gen 2 there is no more
03:04Snapdragon vs. Exynos, which is a bit of a shame because I used to enjoy making those videos, but it is good news because for
03:08Years, I've been banging on about how here in the UK and other parts of the world with the Exynos
03:13We've basically been getting the inferior version of the phone now everywhere 8 gen 2 and actually not just any agent to agent to for
03:20Galaxy, they've boosted this CPU clock speed
03:22We get some snapdragon site AI camera upgrades and a few other things, but most importantly it's a lot faster
03:28And to demonstrate that here are two s22 ultras one with the Exynos and one with a snapdragon
03:34Let me show you my results from Geekbench as well as the 20-minute 3d mark wildlife extreme stress test
03:40Not only are the peak scores between 50 and 70 percent higher
03:44But the stability is also better than the older snapdragon s22
03:47But to top it all off the s23 also used the least battery life
03:52So speaking of battery despite the fact that we have the exact same size
03:565,000 million power cell and maybe a small part of me wishes that we still had the note
04:01Series and so that we could have a s23 ultra without the s pen and even bigger battery
04:05But anyway, even though the standard s23 and the plus both have bigger batteries now, they've bumped it up by 200 million powers
04:12It's the same size in here
04:14But thanks to the more efficient snapdragon 8 gen 2 chip and also the screen because we have LTPO 3 now
04:20So the dynamic refresh rate is even more efficient
04:23It's a bit faster and actually even the materials they use for the screen helps to preserve battery
04:27It all adds up to make this last a decent amount longer after five hours of moderate use in YouTube social media apps
04:34But a gaming and shooting some 4k video the s23 had 60% of its battery left versus 55 and 52 percent on the s22
04:42So it's not a night and day difference, but you're looking at roughly an extra hour of battery
04:46As my friend did the cokin would say coffee check cheers
04:54Can I show you the best thing ever it's called scribe and they're very kindly sponsoring this video
04:58But honestly, I don't do this for free because it's so friggin useful
05:01Although don't tell them that scribe is a free Chrome extension or desktop app if you prefer and it's really handy way of creating
05:08Step-by-step guides and tutorials for me whenever I work with a new editor
05:11I have to show them how to upload a video and all the tags and the settings are like on my channel
05:15Normally, I just take a bunch of screenshots and put them in a Google document and do some annotations or a screen recording
05:20But then it's a big file and you can't really mark it up
05:22It's a real pain. So to save yourself a headache try scribe and all you have to do is press record
05:26Just go through the process once and it will then also generate a step-by-step guide which you can edit
05:31You can add extra tasks. You can delete stuff. You can change the text try it once and I promise you
05:35There'll be a million ways you can think of using this and I can imagine for teachers for students for onboarding a new job
05:41Anything that you have to guide someone through a process
05:43The whole thing is incredibly intuitive and it's all completely free and you can get started with my link in the description below
05:48And you can also upgrade to scribe Pro if you prefer if you want to record both on web and your desktop
05:53But start with a free version and create professional guides and tutorials in just a couple of minutes
05:57So it's faster it lasts longer
05:59But what about the camera does the 200 megapixels on the new sensor and the better processing really live up to the hype?
06:06Because it's a similar quad lens setup
06:08Although now we do get a 200 megapixel main camera with the upgraded ISO cell HP 2 sensor
06:14Which yes is superior to the HP 3 confusingly that Samsung make
06:18Then there's the 12 megapixel ultra wide where not a whole lot has changed
06:22Although it still doubles as the macro which now has a shorter focal length
06:26So you can get even closer to your subject and then we have the 210 megapixel
06:30Telephoto lenses and on paper the specs are very similar to before although Samsung tell me they have upgraded the hardware
06:39You
06:44Up front we have a new 12 megapixel selfie, which is surprisingly down from last year's 40 megapixels
06:50But we do now get dual autofocus and video now tops out at 8k 30 on the rear camera up from 24 last year
06:57although more importantly
06:59Stabilization particularly in low-light has been significantly improved
07:08The fantastic expert raw app has also been updated and you can now access it within the more tab within the camera rather than having
07:15To open up separate app and they've also bumped the raw resolution up to 50 megapixels from 12
07:19And while the s-22 also had an astrophotography mode, which is basically just a long multiple exposure shot
07:25They've added a new sky guide which superimposes a star map over what you're looking at, which is quite cool
07:30But
07:34Now let's bring in the s-22 ultra because I want to show you some side-by-sides
07:39Generally, the s-23 has a more natural less over sharpened. Look. It's like Samsung have dialed back the processing
07:45The s-23 shots are more professional looking color, especially skin tones are now much warmer and more natural
07:52It's also generally a bit brighter sometimes leaning towards being overexposed especially in portraits
07:58Which can kind of ruin the shot
08:00But then on the flip side of that we do also see the dynamic HDR kick in more for now when you have particularly bright
08:06Elements in an image like TV screens or the Sun reducing that brightness and giving you a more evenly exposed photo
08:13Zooming in whether it's the three times the ten times or even up to 30 times, which is still very usable
08:18I've noticed subtle improvements with more detail and more accurate colors, although occasionally more noise as well
08:24Sadly though anything beyond 30 times all the way up to the hundred times is still unusably bad
08:29It's not really improved here nor were the astrophotography or the moon shots
08:32I took nothing's really changed there and also unfortunately shutter lag doesn't seem to be significantly better
08:38The lighting is definitely tricky, but I was trying to grab a shot of Sylvie my cat and she proved just as elusive on both
08:44I couldn't get a photo in focus as you would expect in good light
08:48The shutter lag was a lot faster and I was quite impressed with how these portrait shots of the doggo came out
08:52Well until he started shaking
08:54However, what has really impressed me is video
08:57I think this is the biggest upgrade for the camera overall and in particular the stabilization for my money
09:03It's on par with the iPhone now, which is a huge step forward for Samsung and it's particularly noticeable in low light
09:09Side by side you can feel the vibration of every footprint on the s22. But while not flawless, it's much smoother now
09:16Selfies are a bit of a mixed bag in good light
09:20It is noticeably better more true-to-life colors more detail
09:23But then in low light again side-by-side with the s22
09:26It actually seemed to come off worse and it struggled with the focus more which was surprising given the new dual autofocus
09:32Perhaps it was just having a bad day and I do need to spend more time with the camera overall though
09:36It is a decent step up in terms of the camera
09:38Probably not enough to make me want to chuck this in the bin or you know
09:41At least trade in for the s23 ultra in terms of the camera alone
09:44But it is a more refined camera system
09:47And if you are happy to touch up the old photo afterwards, you can get some incredible results plus the long-range zoom is still best
09:53In class, I will definitely revisit this though in my longer term review and see how it stacks up against more of the 2023 competition
10:03Everything else though is all very familiar. If you've used a galaxy phone from the past couple of years
10:07Nothing's gonna really shock you here
10:09We get Android 13 with one UI 5.1 on top which has a couple of features like
10:14New modes and routines and it streamlines some of the privacy settings, but it's nothing groundbreaking
10:19Really what I do appreciate is that we get four years of Android updates guaranteed with this and also I really don't have any complaints
10:26Everything is easy to use and responsive and fast
10:28Although I did jump into the developer options and half the animation times
10:31I'd do that on all my Android phones to make it even nippier and actually what I do like because we have such a big
10:376.8 inch screen if you open an app and do two fingers up it opens split screen mode
10:42And what I would recommend doing is jumping into the settings going down to advanced features and even the labs menu
10:48You can be tinkering for days
10:49I think that's one of the things I do love about the S23 especially the ultra is the fun the
10:54Experimenting the pro features that you just don't get with most other phones
10:58Dex Windows link and of course the S Pen all make a return unchanged
11:02But it's still great for pro users and it definitely makes the note 23
11:05Sorry s 23 ultra stand out
11:07It's funny. We're like 10 minutes into this video. I've barely even mentioned this thing the display
11:12It's not really changed outside of the material on the LTPO 3 tech. It's the same 6.8 inch
11:18120 Hertz quad HD screen and it's still absolutely gorgeous
11:22Couple of points though. It would have been nice if we had Dolby Vision HDR. Obviously, it's a Samsung device
11:27So it's not really that surprising we don't like their TVs, but it would be nice and some other phones like the where is it?
11:34OnePlus 11 do support Dolby Vision with the upcoming Netflix update and the other thing is that by default it's set to the full HD
11:40Resolution, which normally I keep it out to save a bit of battery
11:43But I kind of wish there was an adaptive option or an auto switch like we have with the adaptive motion smoothness where it changes
11:50The refresh rate because I never really get to take advantage of that quad HD. It's there, but I don't use it
11:55So to wrap up and as I concluded in my dissertation at university more research is needed
12:01Which does sound like a bit of a cop-out but really I've only had just over a week with this and I am working on
12:06Some big battery and camera comparisons with its rivals and also we haven't had any updates for this yet
12:11So I'm gonna come back for a longer term review soon. But for now, I am very impressed with the s23 Ultra
12:16It is a lot of money and I think maybe the s23 plus or the pixel 7 Pro or the one plus 11
12:22Maybe better value choices, but if you want the biggest and just the most versatile phone in the world, this is it
12:28But what do you reckon you're gonna upgrade have you already bought one? Let me know what you make of the s23 Ultra in the comments
12:33Below I'll also leave my affiliate link below for Samsung if you want to check this out and get that pre-order upgrade
12:38Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat