Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S23 Series at its Galaxy Unpacked event on Tuesday, 2 February and the company sent over a unit of Galaxy S23 Ultra for review. I have been using the phone for about a week now and this is going to be my first impression of it. Now, let’s take a look and see what made this phone so expensive.
Unboxing
The Galaxy S23 Ultra comes in a simple black box with an image of the phone to indicate the colour of the unit inside. Samsung sent over Cream colour and our unit is equipped with 12GB RAM and 256GB of storage.
Inside the box, there’s a USB-C to USB-C cable, a SIM ejector tool, some reading materials and that’s it. Samsung is still not providing a charger with the phone and you have to get it separately. If you pre-order the phone, you can get a charger for free.
The Design
At a glance, the S23 Ultra bears a striking similarity to the previous S22 Ultra. Both of these will be difficult to tell apart for any unobservant people.
When I first held the phone, it felt like a hefty smartphone. I have quite a big hand and I feel the phone is a bit unwieldy one-handed. Because of the weight and size, I feel more comfortable using it with both hands.
Besides that, this is a very rectangular phone. There’s a slight curve at the back, making it slightly easier to hold single-handedly and it’s also matte instead of glossy (no hideous fingerprint smudges). The sides, top and bottom of the phone are all flat, but the S-Pen protrudes a bit at the bottom. Depending on what you are wearing, it might be difficult to slip this phone into a jeans pocket, for example.
Speaking of the S-Pen, the stylus doesn’t colour-match the phone, only its metal clicker thing does. It would be nice if the stylus matches the colour of the phone. The S-Pen functions exactly the same as the previous S22 Ultra.
The display has a very slight curve which made me feel like I’m using a flat screen. The slight curve makes it very nice for gestures navigation.
The camera lenses on the back juts out quite a bit, but it doesn’t make the phone wobbly when you place it on a table to type.
The Software and Camera
The S23 Ultra is jam-packed with features and I haven’t even tried most of them. The phone is powered by a custom-tuned Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Samsung’s latest One UI 5.1 , so it runs smoothly and very responsive. So far, I have not encountered any bugs or hiccups.
Photos taken by the new 200MP sensor look amazing and it can capture high level of details without making the photos look over-sharpened. You can check out some sample photos below.
That’s all for my first impression of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Overall, it’s giving me some positive impressions. Be sure to stay tuned to Tech TRP for the phone’s review which will be coming soon.
