Best Android Phone 2023

Samsung galaxy S23 ultra

This is the Galaxy S23 Ultra the most expensive new phone in Samsung's Galaxy S23 lineup it launches on February 17^th and starts at twelve hundred dollars I've been using this phone for a few days and the biggest thing I can say about it so far is that it's a lot in just about every single way from the new 200 megapixel camera to the giant screen and of course that high price but that's not necessarily a bad thing because this phone is supposed to be a lot that's why it's called the ultra-it’s for people who want something that's a bit more than what the average smartphone can provide I've been using this for a few days and there's a few things that jumped out to me so far that I've liked and disliked first of all I've been really impressed with the new camera it's not a huge leap over the s22 ultra but you can definitely tell the difference when you're looking at photos side by side I also noticed that the performance is a bit faster than the s22 ultra now that it has that new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor and then the battery life also seems promising so far and also don't forget you get four generations of Android OS updates with this phone so it shouldn't feel out of date anytime soon now on the flip side I was really hoping to see faster charging from this device you still only get 45 watt charging so and again you also need the right compatible adapter for that so I was really hoping to see Samsung make some improvements there because we've seen a lot of its competitors kind of surpass the 45 watt Mark and again even though the new camera is really great and we've seen some improvements I still feel like the iPhone 14 pro beats it in a few scenarios which we'll dive into in a bit first of all let's jump right into that new camera because that's probably what you're most curious about S23 camera if you watched Samsung's unpacked presentation you know that the company is making a really big deal about the video capabilities on this phone so not only did it increase the frame rate when you're recording an 8K to 30 frames per second instead of just 24 but it's also made a lot of changes behind the scenes to things like dynamic range and color and low light processing so I thought what better way to test out the new video capabilities than to record my review on this phone so right now we are shooting this part of the review of my standup on the Galaxy S23 Ultra we're not recording it at 8K we're recording it at 4K at 30 frames per second but let us know how it looks in the comments aside from video recording the other big thing we're seeing on the S23 ultra is the new 200 megapixel camera that's the biggest difference from last year at least on paper the s22 ultra had a 108 megapixel main camera and I have to say photo I was taken with the 200 megapixel resolution did look really sharp and colorful and there's plenty of detail but the biggest thing that stood out to me about this camera isn't necessarily the higher resolution but all of the other improvements that Samsung has also made I mentioned things like color tone skin tones dynamic range those improvements also carry over to still photography as well and those are the things that really mattered to me the most as I was taking photos with this phone with the 200 megapixel resolution while it's a great thing to have you can really only notice it when you're looking at photos on a very large screen blowing them up maybe printing them out those are the kinds of scenarios that you really want to use that 200 megapixel camera for More dynamic range so taking a look at some of the photo samples you can really tell that there's a bit more dynamic range if you look at the Shadows you can see they're a little bit more defined on the Galaxy S23 Ultra versus the Galaxy s22 Ultra and this photo of a bunch of sweets in a bakery display window is also one of my favorite photos that shows how thecamera is different yes the lighting looks a little bit yellowy but just look at the strawberries in that top row they're much more sharp and crisp and colorful and just they just look more appetizing and I think it's a better overall photon now compared to the iPhone 14 pro and the pixel 7 Pro Samsung's colors do look a bit exaggerated this is something that Samsung has kind of been known for and they have improved their color accuracy a lot over the years but I do think that if you're taking photos with the iPhone or the pixel you're going to get a bit more of that natural look and whether that's a good thing or a bad thing really depends on your preferences.

Now I want to talk about performance because Samsung did something a little bit different this year so this phone runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor but Samsung optimized it for the Galaxy S23 lineup specifically so this means that it's a different chip than what you'll get in the OnePlus 11 and it should offer a bit more performance and a bit more battery life as well and so far the results that I'm seeing are pretty promising in Benchmark tests the Galaxy S23 Ultra does outperform the Galaxy s22 Ultra and the pixel 7 Pro and it also exports 4K video a bit faster than those phones as well which might be useful if you're using this phone for a lot of video projects but that said the iPhone 14 pro still performed a bit faster when I was exporting video and it did also beat the S23 ultra in one benchmark test which you can check out in our full review and otherwise in day-to-day use this felt pretty Snappy and smooth I use this phone a lot for playing games and browsing social media and doing day-to-day things but I also plugged it into my monitor to use it as a mobile workstation and it actually held up just fine there was no lag no stuttering no overheating none of that stuff so this seems like a pretty powerful phone based on on what we're seeing so far

Conclusions

So overall I've been pretty impressed with V3 Ultra it really seems like Samsung achieved what it set out to do with this phone which was to really make a premium phone for people who want to shoot video and maybe use their phone in some professional circumstances like if you're a photographer a video editor again we shot this entire review except for the shots of the phone of course because we couldn't do that with the phone itself but we shot most of this review on the S23 ultra so you know this phone really is meant for people who want more than the average phone if you just want a reliable Android phone for taking good photos that has a reasonably sized screen you probably don't need to splurge on the S23 ultra you can go for something like the pixel 7 Pro which is a bit cheaper at nine hundred dollars and still has really good camera performance and then don't forget there's also the S23 and S23 plus we have not tested those phones yet but I'm really curious to see if some of these improvements we saw in the S23 ultra aside from the 200 megapixel sensor really carry over to those phones as well there you have it this has been our review of the S23 ultra shot on the S23 ultra.