It's hard to think of a worse time to launch a premium smartphone than during a never-ending pandemic during which World War III is kicking off, but Samsung's giving it a go nevertheless.
Which is why I had a new Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra with 256 gigabytes of storageand 12 gigabytes of memory for a short while to check out. Very carefully, as I had to sign an ominous-looking loan agreement for the S22 Ultra that Samsung insisted on.
This is a beautifully built $2099 phone (gulp) that does most everything well, without being exceptionally good compared to other high-end Android phones.
It's a big device along the lines of the laid-to-rest Samsung Note range which was a favourite.
The S22 does get a Note-like S-Pen stylus for screen scribbling, drawing, pointing and gesturing which lives in a compartment at the bottom left-hand corner. It's one of those features you have to try to appreciate, and I suspect many won't pop out the S-Pen on a regular basis, which is a shame.
Samsung fields two versions of the S22 Ultra. Europe gets Samsung's Exynos chipset, with the rest of the world being sold phones containing Qualcomm's Snapdragon Gen 8 electronics.
Both are made with an incredibly fine 4 nanometre process. The main difference between the two is that the Qualcomm part has slightly better performance whereas the Exynos provides somewhat higher up and download speeds for 5G.
It's probably only clear to Samsung why the same phone has to have different innards, but they're pretty quick and capable. Not as fast as Apple's iPhone 13 Pro Max, and as per other high-end Qualcomm equipped phones I've tried recently, the S22 Ultra heats up and throttles down in graphics stress tests.
The main reason to consider an S22 Ultra is the camera system. There are no fewer than four cameras, starting with an ultrawide and the main wide unit that you'll use the most; there are two tele cameras, one with three times and the other with 10 times optical magnification.
The front selfie cam seems to be the same as in last year's S21 models, with 40 megapixel resolution and autofocus.
Like with iPhone 13 Pro Max, Samsung doesn't leapfrog the competition with the S22 Ultra.
Testing by digital photography geeks DXOmark rated the S22 camera system the 13th best overall, behind the iPhone 13 Pro Max which is rated fourth. A little surprising perhaps, and possibly suggests that smartphone vendors are bumping their heads into physical limits such as sensor and photodiode sizes, which can't be masked with computational photography magic.
This is not to say the cameras on the S22 Ultra aren't good, as they take excellent pictures and video, especially at night.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra takes excellent pictures and video, especially at night. Photo / Juha Saarinen
The exception is the periscope-design telephoto shooter which provides the 10X optical zoom capability for the S22 Ultra. You get close to objects from a distance, but even in good light, the camera produces slightly blotchy pics. A firmware upgrade might improve the image quality, and to be fair, long focal length cameras on smartphones are very hard to get right.
Video-wise, the top 8K resolution at 24 frames per second without the necessary image stabilisation for handheld shooting doesn't look as good as what you get in 4K which has faster frame rates. Being able to set which microphone records sound, rear, front or both, is a great feature, however, and they capture audio well.
Being a camera nerd, I would've liked a screen that supports a wide colour gamut on the S22 Ultra to appreciate the billions of colours the cameras on the device can capture. Oddly enough, Samsung's 6.8-inch display on the S22 Ultra doesn't appear to support 10-bit colour depth, testing shows.
Other smartphone makers have gone down the full 10-bit workflow route with their high-end devices.
Not having wide colour screens could be down to extending the life of the 5000 mAh battery that offers 45 Watt charging over USB-C, along with the variable screen refresh rate, up to 120 Hertz. It's easy to get through a whole day between charges with the S22 Ultra.
On the wireless side, 5G is supported, ditto the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard, including the ability to use 5 and 6 gigaHertz for even faster performance.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra is certainly an upgrade on last year's devices, but is the additional refinement worth the outlay? Only you can decide that, but for that money some more of the innovative engineering exuberance that Samsung was known for in the past would've been nice.
