Going back to the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and its unique features proved to me why it’s still a great phone to buy at the end of 2023.
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is nine months old, and over the next few weeks, talk of its successor — the inevitable Galaxy S24 Ultra — will start to gather pace.
I went back to the S23 Ultra to see if it was still as exciting as it was in February this year. I also wanted to see if waiting for the sequel instead of buying it today would be a wise decision to make. Here’s what I learned.What makes the Galaxy S23 Ultra unique
Just using the Galaxy S23 Ultra wouldn’t be enough. I wanted to remind myself what made it special. What if I said I had written the opening paragraphs on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, all using the S Pen stylus? Well, I did, and although it took a while and wasn’t very intuitive for a start, it did remind me just how good the technology behind Samsung’s stylus really is.
I’ve always struggled to get much use from the S Pen as I’m not an artist or a prolific note-taker, but it is one of the S23 Ultra’s unique features. It’s also genuinely well-engineered and very precise, so I wanted to find a way it would fit into my life when revisiting the Galaxy S23 Ultra nine months into its life.
Not only that, but I’ll find any excuse to use the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s camera again, especially as it also has a unique feature: the 10x optical zoom. If I used both these features and didn’t feel much for them, or each disappointed in some way, then holding out for the Galaxy S24 Ultra would probably feel like the right course of action.Writing with the S Pen
Yes, I really am scribbling these words on the S23 Ultra’s screen with the S Pen. Sadly my options for writing anything using it are limited, especially as I wanted to use the S Pen’s handwriting-to-text feature. It doesn’t work in Google Docs, so I had to use Samsung Notes. It turned out to actually be really accurate once I got used to it, but it is quite slow going.
Writing a thousand words solely using the S Pen and Notes would take much longer than it would using a keyboard, and editing it would be even more time-consuming.
