A great camera plus the functionality of the Note line of products makes the S22 Ultra the most capable phone I have ever lived with.
Some people will look at the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra phone and say that it’s overkill. Having used it extensively for the past few weeks, it’s proven to simply do more than any other smartphone I’ve tried. It improves upon the camera system used in last year’s model by enhancing the 108-megapixel main camera as well as a 10x optical zoom; then adds a built-in pen and the features of the company’s older Galaxy Note phones, and rounds it out with a variety of productivity features. Make no mistake about it. The S22 Ultra is a big phone. Measuring 6.43 by 3.07 by 0.35 inches (HWD) and weighing 8.08 ounces, it’s among the largest phones on the market. The design has a more rectangular profile than the regular S22, and the five cameras each bump out on the back separately, as opposed to being in a single block, as on the S22. It looks good, but it’s certainly blockier than the other models in the line. The size accommodates a 6.8-inch 3,088-by-1,440-pixel display, although it defaults to 2,316 by 1,080 for faster performance. In general, it’s hard to tell the difference until you look really closely. As usual for Samsung, it sports a very bright AMOLED display, and as with all the S series phones in the last couple of years, it features an adaptive display, which goes up to 120Hz for smoother scrolling. It also adds adaptive brightness which changes the brightness and contrast of the phone to match the environment. It looks great, even in bright sunlight. One area where it really stands out, though, is its built-in S-Pen and the software to run it, which had long only been part of the Note line. In fact, you should view the S22 Ultra as being as much a successor to the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra as last year’s S21 Ultra. Last year’s model had S-pen support, but not a built-in pen; this year, the pen is nicely built into the left-hand side of the base. When you pull it out, you get a menu that lets you quickly create a note, select part of the screen, write on the screen, translate, and more. New features include the ability to save notes directly into Microsoft Office or email. Samsung says this year’s pen has lower latency than the one on the Note 20, and it worked quite well. I find note-taking and capturing part of the screen to be the most useful features, but then I’m not an artist. As with previous Note designs, I can see where this would be particularly useful for someone who has to annotate diagrams or drawings, or needs to do a quick sketch when out and about, in fields such as architecture or realty.
