The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra has formed as much as be every part that leaks, hints, and hypothesis indicated it might be: a Samsung Galaxy Note, minus the Note branding. It affords a 6.8-inch display screen, a built-in S pen stylus, a boatload of cameras, a $1,199 price ticket, and a boxy form straight from the Galaxy Note sequence.

In addition to the stylus silo, the S22 Ultra beneficial properties some incremental digicam upgrades for low mild and portrait pictures, quicker wired charging (adapter offered individually, after all), and all the most recent parts you’d look forward to finding on a 2022 flagship. And it’s altogether a tool that appears worthy of that flagship title — not less than so far as Samsung’s non-folding telephones are involved.

Aside from the stylus and a slight design shift, the S22 Ultra is an evolutionary replace to the S21 Ultra. Naturally, it replaces final yr’s top-shelf Qualcomm chip with the latest model: the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 within the US (different elements of the world could have a 4nm Exynos chipset). Its 6.8-inch OLED nonetheless incorporates a 120Hz variable refresh fee, however it will possibly attain a fair greater 1,750 nit peak brightness in case you are in direct daylight.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Other spec upgrades embrace Gorilla Glass Victus Plus on the back and front panels, boosted 45W quick wired charging (wi-fi stays 15W), and a variant with an enormous 1TB storage capability. There’s a 5,000mAh battery, 5G and Wi-Fi 6 / Wi-Fi 6E, and, naturally, IP68 climate resistance.

Samsung’s software program assist coverage can also be getting somewhat higher with the S22 technology, too. It’s promising not less than 4 generations of Android OS updates, which is one higher than the three OS updates it beforehand assured for S-series units and matches its present four-year coverage for safety updates.

But the stylus! Samsung has executed extra than simply add a silo and name it a day — S pen latency has been improved from 9 milliseconds to 2.8 milliseconds. It felt very responsive in our (to this point) transient expertise with the cellphone, if not life-changing. Samsung says the algorithm that predicts the trail a person will draw with the pen has additionally been improved and that its handwriting recognition fee is greater (and features a dozen extra languages). The S22 Ultra additionally helps S pen air actions, like flipping by means of your picture gallery or controlling the cellphone’s digicam remotely, with out touching the display screen.

Camera specs on the S22 Ultra are just like its predecessor — you’re nonetheless getting a 108-megapixel predominant digicam, 3x and 10x telephoto cameras, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and a 40-megapixel selfie digicam. Instead, enhancements are largely targeted round low-light picture and video capabilities. It’s now potential to take evening mode portraits, and customers can seize high-resolution evening mode photographs — beforehand, you could possibly both take a high-res or an evening mode shot, not each without delay. On the Ultra, the result’s a 108-megapixel picture that comes with the added light-gathering advantages of pixel-binning know-how; on the S22 and S22 Plus, you get a 50-megapixel picture.

Image: Samsung

Samsung is claiming some spectacular updates to portrait mode depth mapping, too. The firm says that because of processing enhancements, the S22 sequence can higher determine topics and separate them from the background — right down to the extent of particular person strands of hair. That’s an actual feat if true, however we stay skeptical. In any case, the enhancements aren’t restricted to human topics — Samsung says that pet portrait mode photographs are higher now, too.

Expert RAW, an app that Samsung made obtainable for the S21 Ultra late final yr in beta, is making its full debut on the S22 sequence. It can be utilized throughout the entire S22 Ultra’s rear cameras and permits for seize of computational RAW pictures — combining the advantages of multi-frame seize with the post-processing flexibility of RAW taking pictures. It additionally offers entry to handbook publicity controls like ISO and shutter pace.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Equipped with its stylus, the S22 Ultra is re-writing (sorry) Samsung’s definition of a flagship S sequence system. It’s not laborious to discover a dear cellphone that checks the entire containers that Ultra checks: massive display screen, top-shelf processor, superior digicam system. By condensing the Note and S sequence, Samsung provides the Ultra a characteristic to face other than the opposite big-screen, high-performance telephones from the likes of Apple, Google, and OnePlus. Do high-end cellphone consumers truly need a stylus with their system? Samsung is betting that they do — not less than till its foldables actually take off.

Fans of non-folding stylus telephones can pre-order the S22 Ultra at Samsung.com beginning in the present day in phantom black, phantom white, inexperienced, or a brand new burgundy colour. The system goes on sale February twenty fifth in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB variants. The 128GB mannequin has 8GB of RAM; all others embrace 12GB.