Samsung S22 Ultra Explained in 3 Minutes

This is the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.

I'm Julian,

reviews editor for Wired.

I'm gonna walk you through a few new features

in three minutes.

[upbeat techno music]

Full disclosure,

this is an expensive phone.

It's $1,200.

No one really needs to spend that much

just to use your everyday apps,

unless you want this.

[upbeat techno music]

For all you Stylus stans out there,

Samsung says it's improved the responsiveness

of the Stylus since the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra,

the last Samsung phone with an S Pen embedded inside.

There actually hasn't been a Note phone since,

and I have no idea if we'll ever see one again.

The S22 Ultra can convert your handwriting

into text that you can copy elsewhere

in up to 88 different languages,

though I'll bet it really depends

on your penmanship.

Let's give it a go.

So, this is the Samsung Notes app,

it's what you'll have to use

to convert that text.

Tap that little Convert to Text button.

Once you press convert,

there you go, you have,

hello.

You could also hover the S Pen over the text

and have it convert to a different language.

So, you can imagine if you're taking notes in class,

you can write it all handwritten,

convert it to text,

paste it into Google Docs.

One thing I've never liked

with the previous S Pen Samsung phones

is palm rejection.

Instead of writing or drawing like this,

now you've got to make this change,

so the screen doesn't mistake your palm

for your finger or Stylus.

My palm was resting on the glass

and it didn't really interact with the screen,

that's a win.

So, the Stylus can do a ton of other things,

for example, you can actually use it

as a Bluetooth remote,

and you can do some really cool things

like do a little spiral motion

and it'll zoom the camera in a little bit.

Now, onto the camera.

[upbeat music]

Last year's Galaxy S21 Ultra

used a 108 megapixel sensor for the main camera.

It's the same in the S22 Ultra,

but there's this new software feature

called Adaptive Pixel.

Samsung offers the chance

to take either 108 megapixel photo,

which is great for daytime,

or they would use a pixel binning process,

which would create a larger pixel

that could absorb more light,

but you would end up with a 12 megapixel photo.

Now, Adaptive Pixel combines those two photos,

so you get a hi-res image

that can still look great

even if you're in a dark room,

or so Samsung says.

That's exciting if you're really

into night photography,

but of course, these hi-res images

will take up more storage.

This isn't a new feature,

but the S22 Ultra

is still just about the only smartphone in the US

that has a 10 times optical zoom camera.

Next up, screen improvements.

[upbeat music]

If you have ultra in the name of a phone,

it needs to be big.

At 6.8 inches,

it's positively massive

when you put it next to an iPhone 13 mini.

You might hate holding all that screen,

but maybe it's just easier to see everything.

One last thing,

there's also the S22 and the S22 Plus.

They have some small differences over the Ultra,

like how they are smaller,

and have different cameras.

Oh, and they also don't have the S Pen.

[Julian sighs] Well,

that's the S22 Ultra in three minutes.

We'll keep you updated on the S22 Ultra

on wire.com

with all of our other tech reviews.

[upbeat techno music fading]