Introduction

Ease of Use

With its 6.8-inch screen, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is one of the largest phones currently on the market - some might even consider it to be a “phablet” thanks to how big it is.

Whether you're a fan of big phones is generally a matter of personal preference, but it's somewhat of a shame that there isn't an option to have a smaller phone with the same camera setup (as we see with the iPhone 13 Pro vs iPhone 13 Pro Max).

The screen itself has a QHD+ resolution and a refresh rate of 120Hz. That combined with its size makes it one of the brightest and sharpest screens on the market and really makes your photos and videos sing - in fact, they can look a little disappointing when you get them onto a lesser device (such as your computer, or another less-able smartphone).

Putting the size of the phone aside, the design of it is sleek and attractive, with nicely rounded corners and a generally smooth finish that is nice to look at.

We've been using the “Cream” colour way, but there are other options including Green, Phantom Black and Lavender, plus some exclusive colours from the Samsung website such as Lime, Sky Blue, Graphite and Red.

The S23 Ultra has an IP68 rating, making it both waterproof and dustproof. It is also designed to be strong and scratchproof thanks to an aluminium frame, plus the addition of Corning GorillaGlass Victus for the screen. We'd probably still recommend investing in a case, just to be sure.

As is common for current smartphones, almost the entire of the front of the phone is taken up by the display. There is just a very small round cut out for the front-facing camera, which is good news for those who aren't fans of the “notch” type designs we see elsewhere (such as with the iPhone 13 Pro series).

Flipping to the back of the phone and we see the lens setup. For the Samsung S23 Ultra there are four different lenses to choose from, three of which are lined up, and the fourth one sits just to the right.

There is also a Laser AF module which looks a little like a fifth lens but is actually used to enhance the auto-focus performance in close range and low-light environments.

On the right hand side of the phone are the only two physical buttons found on the S23 Ultra. The power on/off button can also be used to activate the camera app by giving it two pushes in quick succession. There's also a volume rocker, which can be used to fire the shutter release if you don't want to use the on-screen controls.

At the bottom of the phone is the USB-C socket. It's worth noting that a power-charging plug doesn't come in the box - which is becoming more and more common.

Only a charging cable is supplied, so you will need to invest in one of those if you don't already own one. Wireless charging is also available, but again, wireless chargers are sold separately.

Fast charging is also possible, with the right kind of charger. With high-power chargers, you can get 50% power in as little as 20 minutes. Although the S23 Ultra has a large capacity battery (5000 mAh), it's probably worth investing in a portable battery pack if you want to take lots of photo or video.

Also at the bottom of the phone, you'll find the hidden “S Pen”, which looks like a small button. If you push it, the pen will pop out a little bit and you can them remove it entirely from the phone.

The primary purpose of the S Pen is to write notes, but, it can also be used in conjunction with the camera to remotely release the shutter.

That makes it helpful when taking selfies or group shots, or perhaps even if you wanted to set up the phone on a tripod or other surface and not touch the phone for certain kinds of shots.

The phone's SIM card is inserted at the bottom of the phone. Sadly there's no option to expand the phone's inbuilt storage via a Micro SD card. For that reason, it's recommended that you buy the most storage you can afford, particularly if you intend to take a lot of pictures, or shoot a lot of video.

It's also considering that if you opt for the cheapest Samsung S23 Ultra - the 256GB option, you also lose out on RAM, with it only offering 8GB. If you choose a 512GB or 1TB model, then you'll also get 12GB RAM.

To launch the native camera app from the lock screen, you simply need to swipe up from the bottom right-hand corner of the lock screen (if you don't want to double tap the physical button). You can also launch the app from the main home screen by tapping the camera icon.

By default, the app will launch in Photo mode, which is what most will likely use for most of their shots.

Every time you close and relaunch the app, it will go back to the default mode - but you can change it in the settings to retain whatever you were previously shooting in if you prefer. That comes in handy if you're often using one of the other shooting modes - such as Pro mode, for example.

In the Photo mode, the phone will apply what it thinks are the best settings without too much input from the user. At the bottom of the composition window, you'll see where you can move between the different lenses.

These are displayed as .6, 1, 3 and 10x. If you tap any of these, a circle will appear around the number to let you know which lens you're using.

You can also pinch to zoom in the composition window to move between the different lenses. If you want to activate digital zoom - known by Samsung as “Space Zoom” - you can either pinch to zoom, or tap the numbers to bring up “30” and “100” in the display.

You can tap around the screen to change the AF point, or you can let the phone decide that for you. If light levels are detected to be low, Night mode will be automatically activated, but you can choose to switch it off if you prefer.

At the top of the screen, you'll see a number of different options for you to change. There's the ability to switch the flash on/off, the option to switch on a timer (2,5,10 seconds), the option to change the aspect ratio and the ability to capture a Motion photo (whereby a short video clip is recorded alongside the main image). You can also elect to switch on filters at this point.

Although the main sensor of the S23 Ultra boasts 200 megapixels, by default, images are output at 12 megapixels. If you do want to take advantage of this super-high resolution you can find the 200 megapixel shooting option under the aspect ratio tab.

If you bring the phone close to a subject, you'll notice that close-focusing is activated. You can switch this off if you prefer by tapping an icon. You won't see this if you choose to shoot in the 200 megapixel mode, as it seems to be swapping to the ultra wide lens to achieve this.

A cog icon can be tapped at the top of the screen which reveals extra shooting options, such as switching on/off Scene optimiser, switching on Video stabilisation, activating Auto HDR and so on. It's worth exploring all of these features when you first start using the phone in order to familiarise yourself with them.

One useful feature for beginners is “Shot suggestions” which gives you guides to help you get good shots - but most enthusiasts probably won't want to use this.

As well as the standard Photo mode, if you swipe left from the main screen, you'll be taken to Portrait mode. This used to be known as Live Photo, but provides essentially the same functionality - it allows you to create shallow depth of field effects.

With it you can either shoot at 1x for environmental type portraits, or 3x for more classic portrait effects. You can also change the type of background blur, with options including a standard blur, a “studio” effect, “high-key mono” and so on. As well as this, you can alter the strength of the blur for a more subtle or stronger effect depending on your preferences.

Although it is called Portrait mode, you can use it for other non-human subjects too. If you're not happy with the blur effect, you can also change it after-the-fact in the image preview, which is helpful.

To the right of Photo mode, you'll find Video mode. With this, you can shoot with any of the four different focal length lenses when recording in Full HD and 4K. The default video option is Full HD at 60fps, which also gives you the option to switch on Super steady for the best image stabilisation.

At other resolutions, of which 4K and 8K are available, stabilisation is only provided through optical image stabilisation and so might not be quite as suitable for shaky filming, such as while walking and so on.

It's worth noting that if you switch on SuperSteady then a crop will be applied - to compensate for this, the app will automatically switch to the 0.6x lens, but you can override this and shoot at 1x instead if you prefer (with SuperSteady switched on, 3x and 10x shooting is disabled).

If recording in 8K, you'll also notice quite a heavy crop is applied, and when in this mode you can only record using the 1x lens.

It's also possible to record Video by holding down the shutter button when in Photo mode - it will record in whatever was the last video format you had selected.

There are lots of other shooting modes found in the “More” tab of the native camera app menu. There's quite a few options here, including Night mode (which you might want to use to ensure you're definitely shooting with the Night functionality, rather than relying on it automatically activating), Food, Panorama and some video options such as Slow Motion, Hyperlapse and Pro Video. There's also Portrait Video which can be used to capture shallow depth of field effects in video.

Perhaps the most useful shooting mode for enthusiast photographers is “Pro” mode. With this, you can make changes to various settings including ISO, shutter speed, exposure compensation, type of focus, white balance, metering and so on. You are able to shoot using any of the four lenses, and it's only in Pro mode that you can record raw format images (which are recorded in the universal DNG format).

To make changes to settings, you tap on the parameter you want to change (for example, ISO) and then use the slider to move to the setting you wish to select. Each of the settings can be set to Auto allowing you to use a combination of a fully automatic set up (but with the benefit of having access to raw format files) and a semi-automatic set up - such as setting shutter speed yourself, but having ISO automatically adjust.

Unlike with some previous Samsung phones, you can't choose between two set apertures - all of the lenses have a fixed aperture. It's worth noting here that you also can't shoot in the full 200 megapixels when using Pro mode, only the 50 megapixel mode.

Expert Raw is an optional app that you can download and install which sits under the More tab of the default camera app. It offers the main advantage of being able to record both 12 megapixel and 50 megapixel Raw files (but still not 100mp), as well as offering Multiple Exposure and Astrophoto modes, both of which will also be coming to the previous S22 Ultra model at some point.

Image Quality

Photographs straight from the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra using the standard Photo mode are great, with an excellent level of detail and vibrant yet realistic colours. We were pretty confident that this would be the case, as the Ultra range has impressed for some time.

With four different lenses to choose from, as we'd expect, you'll get the most favourable results when using the standard lens / main sensor. That said, the ultra-wide-angle lens puts in a very good performance and comes into its own when recording landscape scenes and the like.

When it comes to the 3x and 10x lenses, these are pretty good, but perform best in good light - particularly the 10x, which has a pretty narrow f/4.9 aperture.

The space zooms of 30x and 100x are really not recommended unless you're particularly desperate to get closer to a subject - particularly from the 100x setting, we see the results are very smoothed and aren't likely to be useful for many scenarios.

Samsung's Portrait mode puts in a good performance, especially so when the subjects have a simple or basic outline. You might find that with fine details such as hair or fur, the delineation between the subject and the background is a little bit messy, but it's only really obvious if you zoom in and examine such drop-offs.

Night mode works very well, producing particularly good long exposure images, especially again when shooting with the main lens. The ultra-wide lens copes reasonably well, as does the 3x telephoto lens. We'd probably avoid using the 10x lens in Night mode, again except when you might be particularly desperate to get close to the action.

You can expect good video performance from the S23 Ultra, though it seems like the audience for 8K video recording is still fairly limited. 4K is detailed and smooth, but if you want the smoothest results you'll need to record in Full HD and switch on Super Steady.

Noise

There are 12 ISO settings available on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting.

JPEG	RAW
ISO 50	ISO 50
ISO 100	ISO 100
ISO 200	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 800
ISO 1600	ISO 1600
ISO 3200	ISO 3200

Focal Range

0.6x

1x

3x

10x

Long Exposures

Portrait Mode

Panorama

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra camera, which were all taken using the JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Samsung RAW (DNG) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movies & Video

Product Images

Conclusion

With a huge amount of choice for photographers in the smartphone market, there’s something to suit pretty much every need. When it comes to the Samsung S23 Ultra, we have an extremely capable and well-performing smartphone camera that performs excellently in a wide range of different shooting situations.

It offers a good degree of flexibility thanks to the quad-camera setup, with all of the lenses producing pleasing images - but particularly the main camera. Video is also nicely rendered, making it perhaps an ideal choice for content creators and vloggers too.

Some of the specifications are arguably there to grab headlines, but won’t really be used by most average photographers. For example, the 100x zoom is a great feature to gain attention, but the reality is that the images aren't really worth keeping. The 10x zoom is impressive enough on its own though, and is longer than is offered by most devices on the market.

Similarly, the 200 megapixel camera sounds mightily impressive, but in reality it's best to let the S23 Ultra pixel-bin those images, delivering brighter, clearer pictures at a much more modest 12 megapixel resolution.

The native camera app is impressive here, offering a good range of shooting modes and importantly having a Pro mode for more serious enthusiast photographers. This is something that is lacking on some of the Samsung’s competitors, most notably the iPhone 13 Pro and the Google Pixel 6 Pro.

Of course there’s always a but, and in this case, it’s the price - the Samsung S23 Ultra is one of the most expensive smartphones on the market, perhaps putting it out of reach for most people. That said, if you consider just how much you get for your money, it could easily be considered worth the money - especially if you can skip a couple of generations and keep the phone for a few years.

If you want the best smartphone for photography that is currently on the market, it’s quite probable that the Samsung S23 Ultra is the right one for you. With 4x lenses, 8K video, a stunning display and a fantastic native camera app, there really isn't much to dislike about it - but if you can’t quite stretch to the asking price, consider the Google Pixel 7 Pro if you’re into Android, or the iPhone 13 Pro if iOS is more your thing.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	5
Features	5
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	4

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra from around the web.

Specifications

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