Other specs include Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC (but not MST), and IP68 water resistance-all pretty similar capabilities to the S21 Ultra. The phones don't come with a charger, so you have to buy a USB-C PD adapter to take advantage of those rates. The new devices also support 15W wireless charging and reverse charging. The rate is now back to 45W, which means you can fill 50% of the battery in 20 minutes. Phones in the S20 lineup offered 45W charging, but that dropped to 25W for the S21 entries.

You won't find a microSD card slot, however.

The S22 Ultra comes with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. The sample unit I handled had one physical SIM slot and one eSIM, but carriers can disable the eSIM on their units. The new modem, meanwhile, is supposed to bring better reception, which we'll be putting to the test in our full review. We benchmarked the 8 Gen 1 processor in late 2021 and found about a 15% performance bump over the Samsung Galaxy S21-still not enough to beat the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Like the rest of the S22 family, the Ultra is one of the first US phones with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and a Qualcomm X65 modem. The screen also has an ultrasonic, under-display fingerprint sensor and a small round cutout for the front-facing camera. The S21 went down to only 10Hz, so this should, in theory, make the 5,000mAh battery last a bit longer. Samsung claims it can decrease the refresh rate from 120Hz to as low as 1Hz to save power with static content. Just don't expect anything as major as the jump from the S20's buggy mess of a 10x zoom camera to the fabulous one in the S21 Ultra.Īccording to Samsung, the S22 Ultra's 6.8-inch, QHD+ AMOLED display automatically alters not just screen brightness, but also contrast to make the details of images more visible in different lighting. The S22 Ultra's larger, Note-like design is the biggest differentiator between it and the S21 Ultra, but the new model benefits from a few spec bumps, too. The Galaxy S22 Ultra comes in four colors The stylus felt responsive in my brief interaction with it, but so did the old version with the Note 20 Ultra. Samsung says it reduced latency from 9ms to 2.9ms, but 9ms was already as low as the 120Hz screen could handle. The S Pen here isn't the bigger, soft-touch S Pen that the Galaxy S21 Ultra used, but a Note S Pen that's slim and hard-it feels just like the S Pen that came with the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

The S22 Ultra has curved edges that harken back to the old Note Edge, plus the squared-off top and bottom that enables retractable S Pen integration. As Samsung's vice president of mobile product management Drew Blackard said in a briefing, it's 'the natural next step for a Note owner.' As soon as you pick up the Galaxy S22 Ultra ($1,199), you know it's just a Note.

Keep my notes app on a s8