Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Is the Best Android Phone for Most People

If you need to purchase a brand new Android telephone and Google’s new Pixel lineup isn’t doing it for you, the Samsung Galaxy S22+ is the flagship to purchase. While it’s not an over-the-top, cutting-edge telephone like Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra, it has most of the identical bells and whistles, together with an extremely digital zoom, a stunning show, and prolonged battery life.

It doesn’t have is the perfect digital camera that Android has to supply—Google’s Pixel 6 telephones are nonetheless the perfect in the case of pictures, to not point out they price quite a bit much less lower than what Samsung’s pricing the Galaxy S22 lineup. At a beginning value of $800 for the common Galaxy S22, and $1,000 for the higher-end Galaxy S22+, you actually should ask your self if spending a bit of extra on Samsung’s feel and look is definitely worth the trade-off in battery and nighttime pictures.

The Two Choices

Samsung gives the common Galaxy S22 in two variations, one with a 6.1-inch display screen and one with a 6.6-inch AMOLED show, the latter of which is featured right here. The firm supplied the identical selection with final 12 months’s Galaxy S21 lineup. However, this transfer nonetheless appears plucked immediately out of Apple’s playbook, contemplating the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max can be found in comparable sizes. The S22 and that iPhone 13 lineup kind of look-alike from afar, particularly should you solely discover Samsung’s rounded edges.

The Galaxy S22+ is the right telephone dimension for most individuals. It’s a bit of wider than the iPhone 13 Pro, and it’s technically half an inch smaller than the Pixel 6 Pro. Initially, I most popular the S22 once I first went hands-on with the gadgets as a result of it felt extra pure in my arms. But then I spotted the bigger show on the Galaxy S22+ is more healthy for my life since I primarily eat video on my telephone and make excuses to catch Pokéballs whereas I’m outdoors. I additionally closely rely on the picture-in-picture characteristic for multitasking, which is less complicated on a bigger display screen.

Your priorities might differ when assessing the display screen dimension, however there are a couple of lacking options to think about earlier than going for the cheaper, extra pocketable S22. It has a smaller battery, and it’s lacking the 1750 nit most brightness characteristic of the Ultra and S22+. There’s additionally a slight distinction in community connectivity. The S22 doesn’t have Wi-Fi 6E or ultra-wideband capabilities, so it’s not even future-proofed in opposition to the present community enhancements going down.

I’m a sucker for the pinkish Galaxy S22+ that Samsung despatched over for evaluation, particularly the rose gold. The Galaxy S22 collection additionally is available in Phantom Black, Phantom White, and a green that’s extra teal in individual. Both variations have a very pretty design, as Samsung flagships are inclined to, and I’m additionally relieved they’re not slippery on the again like Google’s Pixel gadgets.

Solid Performance

Samsung packed every Galaxy S22 gadget with Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and 8GB of RAM, and each telephones prime out at 256GB of storage. If you want greater than that, you’ll should improve to the S22 Ultra, which gives as much as 1TB of cupboard space and 12GB of reminiscence.

That distinction in RAM is particularly noticeable when operating artificial benchmarks. The Galaxy S22+ scored barely decrease than the Ultra in Geekbench as a result of Ultra’s additional RAM. And in comparison with the Apple iPhone 13 Pro’s A15 Bionic chip, the Galaxy S22+ vastly underperformed. At the very least, it beat out Google’s Pixel 6 smartphones, which run on customized TPU chips and scored the bottom out of all of the telephones talked about right here. It’ll be fascinating to see the evolution in efficiency between the gadgets with third-party chips, like Samsung’s telephones, and people with first-party ones, like Google and Apple’s gadgets.

Anyway, benchmarks are supposed to present a tool’s relative efficiency and aren’t a measure of day-to-day skills. The Galaxy S22+ had no points dealing with something I threw at it over the course of every week. I recorded movies with the built-in display screen recorder and edited them in InShot. The telephone was strong for net searching with the Samsung Browser, Chrome, and DuckDuckGo. I even have widgets operating on prime of a paid Samsung theme, and the Galaxy S22+ has no drawback managing all that visible mess. Other reviewers have famous some stuttering whereas scrolling via particular web sites, however I haven’t personally encountered that problem. However, I did discover the Galaxy S22+ get significantly heat whereas modifying a video on TikTok.

The Galaxy S22 has a 3,700 mAh battery, whereas the Galaxy S22+ has a 4,500 mAh battery. The S22+ lasted 15 hours and 20 minutes in our battery rundown check. For the additional $300 you’d spend on the Galaxy S22 Ultra, you get a 5,000 mAh battery pack that petered out after about an hour extra of use regardless of the bigger display screen.

Overall, I used to be impressed with the battery lifetime of the 2 gadgets I examined. But the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro outlasted two of those three telephones in our battery rundown check, so if battery life is your prime precedence for an Android telephone, the Pixel 6 is likely to be the best way to go.

Great Cameras, but Not The Best

Samsung must do extra to dethrone Google’s smartphones in the case of pictures. Both the cheaper Pixel A-series and the common Pixel flagship are established as a few of the greatest smartphone cameras within the trade. I’d been holding out hope that with the Galaxy S22 collection, Samsung would rise to the event and are available via with sensors and AI which might be as succesful as Google’s. The excellent news is that it’s clear Samsung’s working towards that purpose. But the unhealthy information is that there’s nonetheless extra work to do.

The Galaxy S22 and S22+ are outfitted with a rear three-camera array. The major digital camera is a 50-MP wide-angle digital camera with an f/1.8 aperture. There’s additionally a 12-MP ultra-wide digital camera and a 10-MP telephoto lens with as much as 3x optical zoom and 30x Stempo Zoom (a cuter title for “digital zoom”). Like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the principle digital camera solely shoots at its full decision if you choose the choice. Otherwise, it makes use of “tetra-binning,” like on the Ultra, which mixes 4 pixels right into a 2×2 array to seize extra particulars in each shot. The result’s brighter, extra even-keeled images.

I assumed the Galaxy S22+ handled photographing a cloudy, foggy day on the bay effectively sufficient that the outcomes weren’t dulled out by all the grey. I nonetheless had bother discovering focus factors whereas capturing, and I wasn’t all the time happy with the outcome when zooming into the picture after the very fact. Samsung’s remaining merchandise are nonetheless not as sharp because the Pixel’s.

The S22+’s zoom can be not as succesful because the Ultra’s second telephoto—the 30x most zoom, as an example, can’t sustain with a flying airplane the best way that the Ultra can. I couldn’t even inform what the mannequin was from my seize. But it was good having all these zoom shortcuts readily available to crop right into a scene. It’s the form of factor you need whenever you’re snapping images of a child that may’t sit nonetheless.

The video efficiency of the S22+ was additionally stellar. I make movies both to archive moments in my life or to shitpost to the web. I made a few TikToks on this new snowglobe-making equipment I received from Japan with the 10-MP front-facing digital camera, and I used to be impressed with the quantity of sound the microphones picked up. The again cameras had been additionally excellent for following my child across the playground, and the S22+ stabilized the video sufficient it appeared as if I had a gimbal in tow.

The Samsung Galaxy S22+’s nighttime efficiency is significantly better than it was. But it nonetheless pales in comparison with what the Pixel 6 pulls off. As I discussed within the Ultra evaluation, the Pixel is helped partially by its software program, which tells it to maintain the digital camera shutter open for an prolonged interval to lace collectively as a lot element as attainable, in addition to its highly effective AI, which turns common images into spectacular ones. The Galaxy S22 digital camera system tries to do that with much less time, which ends up in a darker picture. There is an elective Expert RAW mode like on the Ultra which you can faucet into to play with the shutter and all that. Still, the perfect low-light efficiency is the Pixel 6.

Worth Buying?

Samsung runs One UI 4.1 on prime of Android 12, which has its quirks and upsides. I don’t thoughts it as a result of it’s a bit of extra streamlined than Android 12’s Material You at this level. The firm has dedicated to 4 years of safety updates, and there are even some recent baked Android options coming to the Galaxy S22 collection first. Samsung and Google have a symbiotic relationship lately, so that you don’t really feel such as you’re ready eternally for Pixel exclusives to roll out to different Android telephones.

If you don’t just like the Google Pixel, a Samsung smartphone is your subsequent greatest guess—I’m even contemplating the Galaxy S22+ as my every day driver as a result of I actually don’t just like the glassy really feel of the Pixel 6. The S22+ doesn’t have the perfect evening mode, but it surely’s adequate, and so is all the things else this telephone does. And generally, that’s all you actually need from a smartphone.