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00:00Matt Black Glass, Aluminum Rails, Massive Specs, Quad Cameras, A Hidden Stylus
00:10Eh, oh wait, wait, hang on a sec, yeah, no, that was the wrong phone, sorry.
00:14Let's start that over.
00:17Matt Black Glass, Aluminum Rails, Massive Specs, Quad Cameras, A Hidden Stylus
00:24You... you get the point.
00:30Hey, what's up, MKBHD here, and this is the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.
00:36So, when this first came out, when it got revealed, it was the easiest thing to do,
00:40to just write it off as an incremental upgrade, because, I mean, look at it.
00:45Like, aesthetically speaking, it's basically the same phone.
00:47I mean, the side radii are squared off more, so it feels a bit better in the hand, sure.
00:52Much more boxy, like the Notes of the past.
00:54There are also slightly bigger rings around the cameras,
00:57I mean, it's Gorilla Glass Victus 2 instead of Victus Plus.
01:00But, you know, as far as size, industrial design, button placement, ports, the layout,
01:05it's basically the same phone.
01:07But there are two real upgrades to this phone.
01:10Now, keep in mind, this is replacing the Galaxy S22 Ultra,
01:13which was already my best big phone of the year from last year.
01:18Great battery, great screen, great performance, all of it was rock solid across the board.
01:22So, there's not a lot that I would naturally want to change.
01:25But there are two things, and they're two of arguably the most important things you can actually change in a phone.
01:30The chip that runs it all, and the cameras.
01:32So, you might have heard about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
01:35It's been a really good chip in the other phones that it's been in.
01:38Excellent CPU and GPU performance, and really efficient, which touches battery life.
01:43Now, this phone, actually, the whole S23 lineup, has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy.
01:50A customized version of the chip specifically for these Samsung phones.
01:54So, if you watched the last video about how Apple's taking back the iPhone,
01:57then you know already that optimization and customization for parts inside phones is a good thing, generally.
02:03But the only thing that we've really seen that is customized for this chip for Galaxy
02:08is a slightly higher max clock speed on the performance core, and slightly higher clock speed on the GPU.
02:14So, to be exact, 3.36 GHz instead of 3.2 on the performance core,
02:19and 719 MHz versus 680 on the GPU.
02:23So, yeah, it does score slightly better on benchmarks than the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 2,
02:28and that's nice for a little extra headroom for high-performance stuff like gaming and for future-proofing.
02:33But that's not the whole story. There's two main things that matter here.
02:36One is efficiency gains.
02:38So, obviously, performance is awesome, but because efficiency is better,
02:42these phones get some serious battery life gains that we'll talk in a second.
02:46But also, too, is bye-bye Exynos,
02:50because they're not making an Exynos version of this phone, as far as I can tell, anywhere else.
02:54They're shipping every S23 Ultra with a Qualcomm chip,
02:57so everyone gets the efficiency and performance gains from the Qualcomm version.
03:01So, let me tell you, the battery life on this phone is actually...
03:04It's been incredible. Like, it's really, really good.
03:07So, it's the 5,000 mAh cell again. Shouldn't be a surprise.
03:11But with this huge screen, I guess it kind of is actually a surprise.
03:14I had a two-day period at 120 Hz, but 1080p,
03:18where the only time I charged it was on the wireless charger in my car
03:22on the way to and from the studio for, like, the 40 minutes that that drive is.
03:26I didn't charge it overnight or anything like that.
03:28Two full, packed days of high-brightness, high-intensity normal use for me.
03:33Had something like eight and a half hours of screen-on time.
03:36I'm in bed at, like, 11 p.m. at the end of the second day,
03:40streaming on YouTube live, watching LeBron break Kareem's record.
03:44It's still got, like, 10% left. It just won't die.
03:47So, combine this excellent battery life with a pretty solid 45-watt charging
03:51that can go 0 to 100 in an hour, plus wireless charging,
03:55and you've got yourself a battery monster. It's super good.
03:58I don't think enough people are talking about how much better the battery got.
04:01Maybe someone will do one of those crazy long runtime demos versus the past phone.
04:05But, yeah, it's really good. Probably better than you think.
04:08You kind of don't ever need to switch to 1080p to save battery.
04:12As a matter of fact, when you take it out of the box,
04:14immediately just go in and switch it to 1440p,
04:17because you spent $1,200 on this phone and it lasts forever.
04:20Treat yourself.
04:22Okay, anyway, that's the chips. That's what that enables.
04:24But there's also a new set of cameras, hardware, and software across the board
04:28that also is better than you think.
04:31Now, the fundamentals are mostly the same,
04:33which is why this probably gets written off so quickly a lot.
04:36The layout, the aesthetics, the focal lengths, the arrangement,
04:39it's all practically the same.
04:41But we have a new 200-megapixel primary camera
04:45with double the optical image stabilization range as before.
04:48That's hugely important.
04:50And then new sensors across the ultra-wide, the 3x telephoto,
04:53and the 10x periscope cameras.
04:55This new primary sensor setup, though, I know we keep saying cameras are mostly software,
04:59and as far as the look and style of the photos, it absolutely still is.
05:03But the improvement to the stabilization is so important here.
05:07So when you go from a normal sensor to a super-high-resolution 200-megapixel sensor,
05:12the fact is, in these tiny smartphone cameras,
05:14the individual pixels are so small
05:17that individually they physically can't bring in that much light.
05:21So the camera does this thing called binning,
05:24where it combines the information from a bunch of adjacent pixels
05:27to form larger, more accurate pixels in your image.
05:30So you're not shooting 200 megapixels by default.
05:33It's actually binning 16 pixels into one,
05:36so you end up taking a 12.5-megapixel shot for normal photos.
05:40But each photo is theoretically more accurate thanks to its makeup.
05:43And then, like I said, the stabilization performance on this new primary camera has doubled.
05:48That still rattles a little bit.
05:51But that means it'll correct up to 3 degrees of shake now versus the 1.5 from before.
05:56So here's kind of an example of what's happening.
05:59If you get a lens with really good optical image stabilization like this one,
06:04that means it can correct from the movement in your hand much more,
06:08which means you can hold the camera stable for much longer
06:13so it can leave the shutter open to collect more light and still get a sharp photo.
06:18So all of this is to say Galaxy S23 Ultra photos,
06:23most of the time in most lighting, look pretty similar to last year.
06:27So if that's all you're looking at, just like normal side-by-sides,
06:30this is mostly going to come down to the different software tuning.
06:33And there's a little bit more dynamic range than last year,
06:35but, yeah, still top of the line while mostly avoiding looking too HDR-y.
06:39Photos are typically pretty warm from these Samsung phones,
06:42and they have a slightly punchier, more contrasty look than before.
06:46Still very much up the Samsung alley of, like, colorful and saturated,
06:49but it's an aesthetic that I can get behind. I really like.
06:52But on top of that, having this new sensor and optical stabilization means,
06:57one, you can shoot literally 200-megapixel photos now if you really want to.
07:02Now, this does accomplish the intended purpose of capturing much more of the finer detail
07:08in things like landscapes, so if you plan on zooming in on the shot later
07:11or if you're one of the three people on Earth who will actually print a smartphone photo,
07:15this should work, but you should also be aware that it's only really able to give you
07:19these types of results in excellent lighting,
07:21where a ton of light is hitting every individual little pixel.
07:24Anything short of that, and you're going to get a lot of noise really quick.
07:28And there's also a really solid shutter lag as it churns out these massive 40-, 50-megabyte files.
07:34Granted, this mode is mostly for things sitting still, like a landscape or a photo shoot,
07:38but worth noting.
07:40I think the better compromise is you actually also get a 50-megapixel mode,
07:44which kicks out still very detailed images that hang right with the iPhone's 48-megapixel ProRAW shots
07:50in a variety of light, but now the files are 5 megabytes, and there's a little less shutter lag,
07:54but there's still that improved detail over the normal bin shots and not as much noise.
07:58It's all about flexibility.
07:59Like, the standard mode is going to be the best for most shots most of the time,
08:02but you can always turn it up if you want to.
08:04And that's very much the same thing with the zoom.
08:06You see all the cameras on the back.
08:07Like, any phone with two different telephoto cameras is going to have the biggest range
08:11of good zoom performance.
08:13On this phone, anything past 10x is where it really shines compared to others.
08:17And you might have even seen my recent clip of taking a photo of the full moon recently,
08:21which seems to blow people's minds every time they see it.
08:24Wow.
08:26But you also can't forget about video, too.
08:28This is improved video across the board with better processing, the new sensors,
08:32and the much better stabilization thanks to the better OIS.
08:36So this might be the best super steady mode I've ever seen in smartphone video.
08:42And the beauty of it being from optical stabilization is it works great in a variety of lighting,
08:47unlike, you know, some electronic image stabilization, which relies on having a ton of light.
08:51And on top of all of that, the 8K video on this smartphone is very usable.
08:57There are previous phones that have had 8K video.
08:59It's not the first.
09:00But I remember when they first got that capability, they'd always be at, like, 24fps
09:04because that's the most that they could churn out, which is not the right frame rate.
09:09So 8K30, really good.
09:11And if you put it side by side with the 4K, you can actually see the sharpness difference if you really punch in.
09:15If you want a sample of this, the latest autofocus video I shot in my car is in 8K from this phone.
09:21And you can actually go watch it 8K on YouTube right now from the link below that like button if you want to.
09:26Oh, yeah, and also don't forget about the better selfies, too.
09:29There's a new 12-megapixel selfie camera in all these S23 phones.
09:34And while that number is lower on paper than the 40-megapixel selfie camera that came before it, it's better.
09:41It's just better.
09:42Rock-solid proof that the megapixels don't matter.
09:45This selfie camera with the better software processing is very sharp, detailed, has nice color, doesn't flare too much,
09:52and also has a decently wide angle.
09:54It's not ultra-wide, but not bad.
09:55So across the board, this is significant and extensive improvement to the camera, especially the primary camera.
10:02That feels overlooked to me when people have been reviewing this phone.
10:05The one thing I still will complain about is there is still shutter lag, which is different from slow shutter speed.
10:12So like the time gap between hitting the shutter button and actually capturing the photo, it's still real.
10:17And it can still be kind of annoying even if you capture a crisp photo of the wrong moment.
10:21So like I said, it's more pronounced when you take the ultra-high-resolution 50-megapixel or 200-megapixel photos.
10:27You can't exactly do those in rapid fire.
10:29But if the question is, did they make a meaningful improvement to last year's phone to end up here?
10:34I would say between the new chip and the better overall performance and much better efficiency,
10:40which gets you huge battery life improvement,
10:42and the new cameras with the better sensors, better processing, but also much better stabilization,
10:48I would say yes.
10:50Not upgrade from last year's phone, yes, but they've actually made a real improvement.
10:55And again, I don't really need to say too much about the rest because it's the same as before,
10:59which, in the case of the best big phone of last year, is kind of a good thing.
11:03Like all the other things that made this the best big phone are still here, and they're not minor things either.
11:08I haven't even talked about the A-plus display, 1440p, 120Hz LTPO, 1750 nits peak brightness.
11:16It's still awesome.
11:18Still has great speakers, still has very reliable software,
11:21has a pretty good track record now of delivering software updates in a timely fashion for a while.
11:26The base storage has also actually jumped up from 128 to 256 gigs,
11:31and it's faster UFS 4.0 storage now.
11:34It still has the best stylus in a smartphone in the world,
11:37which might mean a lot more to you than it does to me, but, you know, honestly, if I ever use it,
11:41it's nice knowing I can at any time mark up a screenshot or sign a PDF.
11:45And the list goes on, great haptic motor, nice clicky buttons, it's all still here.
11:50This thing sets the standard pretty high.
11:52My analogy that I was making is it feels like the Porsche 911 of smartphones.
11:57Like if you're going to charge $1,200 for a phone, it better set high marks all the way across the board.
12:02But it does, and it's pretty underrated, kind of boring, but it does.
12:06Now, if you want the S23 Ultra to look as improved as it actually is,
12:11I would recommend a skin from channel sponsor dbrand, maybe something like this Damascus skin,
12:15which adds a lot of character where it would ordinarily be pretty blank, you know?
12:19My favorite one is the triple black.
12:20It is actually included for free when you pick up like any of the holographic colorways,
12:24so you can check them out at the link below.
12:26Like I say this phone is boring, and I think maybe understated is the better word.
12:30Like, are there going to be other phones that come out this year
12:33that do one up this phone in certain single categories?
12:37Yeah, 100%. Like there's probably going to be a phone with 120x zoom.
12:42There's probably going to be a phone with, I mean, crazy fast charging.
12:46This is only 45 watt charging. Do I wish this was better?
12:48A little bit, sometimes.
12:50Is there going to be a phone probably with a much bigger, better, faster fingerprint reader?
12:54Yeah, probably.
12:55But as far as just like nailing all the marks across the board, yeah, this does it.
12:59Just as far as overall package, Samsung's software is settled.
13:03The screen is sublime.
13:05It's still the sickest stylus, and it snaps significantly smoother shots.
13:10Sick.
13:12Thanks for watching.
13:13Catch you guys in the next one.
13:15Peace.
13:18.