Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Review: Flat Phone Retirement Plan

Is there anything left to do in the tablet phone market?

The launch of the Samsung Galaxy S22 looks like a plan to retire the company’s range of cookers. By dropping the Galaxy Note line and skipping the 2021 release, Samsung is merging the Note line with the S-Pen and the Galaxy S line, reducing flagship phones to a single annual release.

Take a look at the 2019 Galaxy Note 10 and you’ll see that Samsung has essentially been redesigning it for three years now. It feels like Samsung is standing still, as if the plan is for flat phones to slowly fade into the sunset as the company directs resources towards the future of foldable devices.

Galaxy S22Galaxy S22+Galaxy S22 Ultra
SCREEN6.1 inch OLED screen with 2340×1080 resolution

48-120 Hz, 422 dpi

6.6 inch OLED screen with 2340×1080 resolution

48-120 Hz, 390 ppi

6.8 inch OLED screen with 3088×1440 resolution

1-120 Hz, 501 ppi

OSAndroid 12 with Samsung One UI
CPUQualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or Exynos 2200, both 4 nm
RAM8 GB8 GB12 GB or 12 GB
STORAGE128 GB or 256 GB128 GB or 256 GB128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB or 1 TB
NETWi-Fi 6, BT 5.2, GPS, NFC, mmWave(Same) + 6 GHz Wi-Fi 6E, UWB
PORTSUSB-C
REAR CAMERA12 MP main
50 MP wide
10 MP telephoto (3x optical)
108 MP,
12 MP main, 10 MP wide
, 10 MP 3x optical tele
, 10x optical tele,
laser autofocus
FRONT CAMERA10 MP10 MP40 MP
SIZE146×70.6×7.6mm157.4×75.8×7.6mm163.3×77.9×8.9mm
WEIGHT168 g196 g229 g
BATTERY3700 mAh, 25W charging4500 mAh, 45W charging5000 mAh, 45W charging
STARTING PRICE$799.99$999.99$1199.99
OTHER BENEFITSWireless charging, fingerprint sensor in the screen. Water and dust protection IP68

We’re reviewing the S22 Ultra, but first let’s talk about the line as a whole. The Ultra is a Galaxy Note with a Note-style design, while the S22 and S22+ have a similar design to last year’s S21. The biggest change is the SoC performance jump in both Exynos (international) and Snapdragon (US). Beyond that, it’s hard to credit Samsung with the year-over-year increase in specs. The top-end configuration of the S22 Ultra has less RAM this year, up to 12GB from 16GB. The S22 and S22+ are thinner and lose 300 mAh of battery capacity. The S22+ and S22 Ultra are advertised as 45W fast charging devices, but they don’t actually charge faster than last year’s models.

Prices are still the same as last year: $800, $1,000, and $1,200, depending on where you are in the size range. All of these prices seem too high in the face of Google’s excellent Pixel 6. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single thing that the $1,200 S22 Ultra does better than the $900 Pixel 6 Pro. There’s certainly no $300 difference between the two devices, and if you’re looking for an Android flagship and have the option of buying the Pixel 6 Pro instead of the S22, you should. Of course, Samsung’s big advantage is that most people don’t have the option to buy a Google phone because Google’s small, underfunded hardware division only sells phones in about 13 countries, while Samsung sells them in over 100 countries.

The S22 line has been controversial since its launch. Samsung announced the S21 and S21+ displays with dynamic refresh rates from 10Hz to 120Hz, and then a week later (after accepting pre-orders), Samsung quietly changed the specs to “48Hz to 120Hz”. Samsung touts the S22+ and S22 Ultra as “45W”fast charging devices, but the devices don’t actually charge faster than last year’s 25W models.

We’re still not sure what’s going on with Samsung’s decision to restrict thousands of games and apps through its Game Optimization Service. Samsung’s throttling app has a list of 10,000 apps and games whose CPU performance can be slowed down by as much as 46 percent, and Samsung controls it all remotely via the cloud. Unsurprisingly, Samsung has managed to exclude all major test apps from its throttling scheme, which, according to Geekbench, makes this a scam worthy of being excluded from its test charts.

Samsung promised at some point to release an off button for this throttling app, but it has yet to show up on our test unit. Reports out of Korea say that Samsung is already facing a preliminary investigation by the country’s Fair Trade Commission over the feature, with S22 owners preparing to file a class action lawsuit.

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