The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is perhaps the most anticipated flagship Android phone of 2022. The device starts at the same price as its predecessor the S21 Ultra, but comes with some notable improvements.
While the new design is the most apparent change, there are many other upgrades that are not as obvious. Let's take a look at the top ten features of the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
1. Built-In S Pen
The S22 Ultra is the first device in the S series that comes with a built-in S Pen, imitating the Galaxy Note series. Given the increasing similarities between the S series and the Note series, Samsung finally decided to merge the two.
The S Pen enables a smooth writing and sketching experience with a latency of just 2.8 milliseconds which feels basically indistinguishable from writing on paper. It also comes with all sorts of little but nifty features to increase your productivity.
Along with the phone itself, the pen is also IP68 certified for water and dust resistance.
2. Brightest Display Ever With LTPO 2
The Galaxy S22 Ultra has the brightest display on any smartphone ever with a peak brightness of 1750 nits. That's more than enough brightness for everyday use even if you spend a lot of time outdoors. But under direct sunlight, simply maxing out the brightness can sometimes result in a loss of image quality, making deep blacks appear washed out and colors faded.
To solve that, Vision Booster will map your entire display and enhance color and light in just the right way to minimize that effect. Also, the display comes with LTPO 2.0 tech which can dial down the refresh rate from 120Hz all the way to just 1Hz when you're looking at something static to save battery life.
3. Four Years of Android Updates
One thing that Android phones have always lacked when compared to iPhones is long software support. While the former provides at best three years of major OS updates, the latter pushes out five to six years.
But with the Galaxy S22 series, Samsung is offering a total of four years of Android updates. That means that your Galaxy S22 device will be able to upgrade to Android 16, making it easier for you to hold on to your device for longer than you otherwise might have.
4. New 4nm Processor
Along with four years of software updates, you also get a new 4nm chipset. Depending on your location, this is either the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or Samsung's in-house processor, the Exynos 2200. Both chips are incredibly powerful, can multitask like it's a piece of cake, and are perfect for gamers and power users.
The Snapdragon chip uses the Adreno 730 GPU whereas the Exynos chip (made in collaboration with AMD) uses the new Xclipse 920 GPU based on RDNA 2 architecture. For reference, this is the same graphics architecture found in the PlayStation 5.
While the chips do show slightly different results on benchmarks, it's unlikely that you'll notice any major difference in real-world performance.
5. 45W Fast Charging
While the S21 Ultra was capped at 25W fast charging, the S22 Ultra supports it up to 45W and Samsung says it can charge your phone from empty to 50% in just around 30 minutes. While this might not be as impressive since we've already seen some Chinese phones push out 100W or even faster charging, it's a step in the right direction nonetheless.
6. Snapchat Optimization
You must have noticed that social media apps tend to work better on iPhones than Android phones. This is because the iOS ecosystem is more standardized and easy to work with while the Android ecosystem is messier.
But for the Galaxy S22 lineup, Samsung has partnered with Snapchat to optimize the social media platform to take full advantage of the series' camera system and software upgrades. This means you can take sharper photo and video snaps with better low-light performance, and also use the different cameras on your S22 device for better portrait and ultrawide shots.
7. 1TB Internal Storage Option
The S22 Ultra also comes with a maxed-out 1TB storage option which is only available for purchase on the official Samsung website. The last time we saw that in a Samsung phone was in 2019 with the S10+. For most people, that's a bit of an overkill since you most probably don't need that much space.
However, for gamers, creators, and power users, that can be helpful as you can download more graphically intense games, click countless high-resolution photos and videos, and store tons of movies, TV shows, and more. The phone doesn't have a microSD slot.
8. Better Image Quality
The photography experience on the S22 Ultra is significantly better than its predecessor. For starters, the pixel size is now 123% bigger which means more detail and more accurate colors. The camera lens also has an anti-reflective nano-coating that helps light reach the camera sensor with fewer reflections, feeding it more image data for additional clarity.
Plus, every time you click the shot, the camera will actually take two images simultaneously—one for detail with the 108MP sensor and another for brightness with the 12MP sensor—and merge them together. This results in an overall brighter and more detailed photo, especially when taking zoom shots.
9. Better Stabilization and Low-Light Shots
The main camera of the S22 Ultra now has a 58% wider correction angle for better Optical Image Stabilization (OIS). This means the camera lens can physically move more freely to compensate for jitters while taking shots. This results in sharper photos and videos.
But sometimes, just having great hardware is not enough especially when you're shooting videos at night or in low-light conditions. For that, Video Digital Image Stabilization, or VDIS, uses software to balance your videos by analyzing four times the motion data from your camera shakes and adjusting accordingly.
10. Expert RAW Camera App
The S22 Ultra also has a new camera app called Expert RAW which is designed for professional photographers. The feature gives you full control of the camera's lenses, allowing you to click photos in 16-bit raw format and manually tweak the ISO, white balance, AF, and exposure settings.
Unlike the default camera app, the photos you take with this app won't lose image data and will therefore be extremely customizable. If you often edit your photos in Adobe Lightroom, this will be a treat.
The S22 Ultra Is a New Galaxy Note
There were quite a lot of rumors that Samsung is killing the Galaxy Note series. And while we probably won't see a new device from Samsung carrying that name, the Note still lives on via the Galaxy S series under the "Ultra" name as the best that Samsung has to offer.
For most people, a phone with so much power is simply unnecessary. But if you're someone who needs the best of the best and intends to carry your phone for at least five years, the S22 Ultra is a very compelling option to greatly improve your productivity, gaming, and socials.