1 SAMSUNG GALAXY S23 ULTRA
From $1,949, samsung.com
It’s funny. We’d normally be in the mood to excoriate a company that isn’t pushing the boundaries of its hardware hard, but in the case of the new generation Ultra we’re just not that mad. Much of Samsung’s latest feels eerily similar to the S22, and that’s no bad thing: the S22 Ultra remains an excellent phone. The S23 Ultra is class-leading. To throw the baby out with the bathwater wouldn’t be a sensible thing to do.
Besides, it’s hard to focus on what’s similar given the big headline change: Samsung has offered the S23 Ultra a ludicrous Adaptive Pixel 200MP sensor. This isn’t the first time Samsung has produced such a camera, nor is it the first time one has hit a phone – mid-rangers from Motorola and Xiaomi have employed the company’s ISOCELL eye previously – but it’s the first to benefit from the Korean giant’s processing nous.
This means better low-light performance, as it can combine data from 16 pixels into one. It
