Samsung Galaxy S22 Review

So those spurs werent really just a one trick, pony of being more athletic or dunking all over the top of people or just shooting tons of three pointers or really any of the things that a casual fan would immediately appreciate. Just good solid fundamentals: ball movement, high percentage shots and sharing the load same kind of thing. With the phoenix suns of today, they dont necessarily have one huge standout, mvp superstar, but like the whole team, is really really good and there arent really any weaknesses and theyre quietly the number one team in basketball. This phone is boring like im, not the only one whos thought that and said that, but thats what happens when a phone gets so really good across the board that there arent really any weaknesses, because they didnt really take any huge risks. They just took a good thing and made it better. So i appreciate that you know what youre getting with a samsung flagship, very similar design to last year, just a little bit smaller and a little more squared off and with glass on the back. Now, instead of plastic that little spot where your finger rests under the camera bump too, if you use it without a case, its a little more sharp, but i got used to that pretty quickly. But we all expect an ip68 water resistant phone, solid speakers, clicky buttons. The best ultrasonic fingerprint reader in the game, a nice satin finish – you know not all of these things can be said about every other phone, but theyre all here, and i even want to give a shout out to the in the hand, feel of the smaller galaxy S22, so i talk about in the hand, feel all the time but samsung made both of these phones.

Smaller than last year, the s22 plus went from 6.7 inches to 6.6 diagonally still big, but then the smaller s22 went from 6.2 to 6.1 inches and, dare i say it has a bit of a compact feel to it now. Obviously it sounds crazy to say that about a phone that still has a six inch screen, but the fact that im coming from bigger phones combined with the flat sides and the tiny, symmetrical bezels and the corner to corner display. This has me feeling like its about as compact as the phone can possibly be and im almost tempted to have it in the running for maybe compact phone of the year. Maybe it just holds that lead for right now in february, but speaking of displays thats the one thing that we definitely know samsung to have been good at for a long time. This year, though, there was a bit of confusion around them, so lets clear that up so both the s22 and s22 plus have flat 1080p 120 hertz adaptive ammo led panels. The plus is obviously bigger, and it also has the higher max brightness of 1750 nits, where the s22 gets up to a very respectable 1300 nits theyre, both very viewable outdoors. Although the peak brightness on the bigger phones and also the ultra, is crazy bright, like you can view it in direct sunlight, its awesome, but there was a question about whether these were ltpo displays or not so thats that newer tech that allows you to modulate the Display refresh rate down to 10 hertz to save battery so id ask samsung – and i mentioned this in the impressions video that they told me that these are not ltpo displays, but then at the same time, on the spec sheet.

It also said that these go from 10 to 120 hertz, so that was a bit confusing, but now, a few days later, if you check samsungs, actually changed those spec sheets and their website saying it can go from 48 to 120 hertz. So they clarified that data transfer rates to the display can go as low as 10 hertz, but the display is still refreshing faster, so they updated their site to reflect the widely recognized industry standard of the actual refresh rate huh. Its almost like some other companies sometimes lie to people by expressing things in other non standard ways anyway. So its not the full variable, refresh rate range of ltpo2, like we have on the ultra, which is a bit of a downside to an 800 to a thousand dollar phone. But aside from that, its a great bright, responsive display in this adaptive mode and thats. What matters most to me, i did notice theres still some situations and still a few apps, where it kicks down to 60 hertz on purpose, like maps apps like waze and google maps, and still the galaxy store app for some reason, but with all the color customization And a really good, auto brightness, the only possible downside with this screen would be battery life, and on top of that, the only concern for me really going into reviewing these phones was the battery life because number one both the phones are smaller and so both of Them have a 300 milliamp hour smaller battery than last year and number two.

The new snapdragon 8 gen 1 ship had some concerns about it, its thats obviously brand new and supposed to be very efficient, but it also appears to be geared to be a very high end. Chip very high performance, so it performs really well puts up great numbers. Better than previous chips on benchmarks and it crushes gaming, but it runs a little hot and if theres a reason, almost every flagship you see coming out with this new chip also has like a huge section in their presentation about their new massive super. Innovative new cooling solution so with no ltpo smaller batteries and a potentially higher power drawing chip. I was a little concerned about battery life on these phones turned out to be fine, not amazing, not like headline making, but san antonio spurs, boring level good. So david was testing the s22 plus most at the studio and got a solid day and a half of use so starting a day at 7 a.m and then getting to 1 pm the next day before the battery dies pretty solid, and i was using a smaller S22 for a few days and had no problem ending a normal day with 10 to 20 percent left now, if i did a lot of high brightness navigation and gaming big power draw stuff, i could take big chunks out of this battery fast. So that did not surprise me with this chip. It is a more efficient four nanometer process node now, so it does really well with standby, but you can absolutely burn through it with heavy use.

Something to keep in mind too, though the s22 plus has a better overall battery experience, because it also supports 45 watt fast charging instead of the 25 watts on the smaller phone. Now it doesnt come with it, so its 50 bucks extra to get that 45 watt charger, but thats a difference to note you wan na know something i did find. I like less about the s22, though than last year, its a subtle one, but its real. The vibration motor, so the haptics are still actually really good and really strong and clicky and responsive, and i love that about it. But theyve switched from a z, axis vibration, motor to an x axis vibration, motor. It doesnt sound, like it make a huge difference, but thats a difference in the direction of the pulsing of the motor, and that makes it a lot less strong in my pocket and on a table for feeling the vibrations. I missed a lot of notifications just because it didnt strongly buzz me enough Music, so yeah, i dont know that was the subtle thing. You can still feel the vibrations really well and turn vibration intensity all the way up, but the direction is different, not sure why? Maybe space savings, but its real, maybe the most exciting potential superstar upgrade on these phones, though, is the cameras. The s22 having a major camera upgrade would be like the 2016 golden state warriors signing kevin durant, making them the clear number one favorite right.

You have a new 50 megapixel main camera, a 10 megapixel 110 degree ultra wide and another 10 megapixel, 3x telephoto camera. But this new camera system is more harrison barnes than kevin durant, meaning its its really good, but its not going to blow your mind at how good it is. I love that we take photos this good from a smartphone for granted. You give it pretty much any normal lighting situation and handles it really well. Samsungs colors are nicely balanced. Theyve hit their stride with processing that isnt too overly sharp or saturated. The ultrawide is definitely softer than the main camera, but it still does well with a lot of light and the telephoto is rock solid, no weird hdr haloing issues and pictures, no white balance, inconsistency, problems, no autofocus issues and pretty minimal shutter lag. Its just boring tim duncan with the bank shot level solid. Also i i got ta say i love that it no longer punches into 3x when i shoot 8k video on the phone. I know ak video is not the most popular feature, but last time the higher resolution camera was the telephoto. So if i shot ak video, it would punch into a 3x crop that was rough. It doesnt do that anymore. Now its just a tiny crop in on that main sensor, which is actually a smaller crop than on the ultra, because the ultra is cropping into the middle 33 megapixels of this massive 108 megapixel sensor, so id actually rather shoot 8k video on the regular s22s than The s22 ultra now im not going to do it because its still 24 fps, which is the wrong frame rate shop.

com, but still like why couldnt samsung add a little switch to make it 8k 30. If i wanted to the last three snapdragon chips have been able to support 8k 30fps video, and i know you know 8k is supposed to be the super high end cinematic feature, but at least buried in the settings. Let me do ak30. If i want to, i dont know, maybe its a samsung thing, other phones have been able to do it, not samsung. Now there are way more software improvements with these cameras like night photography which samsung calls knightography, because they have to name everything for some reason, but thats for better detail and night shots and ai stereo portrait mode improvements for better cutouts and space. Zoom stability, locking and auto framing that can track up to 10 faces around a frame and a new, separate expert raw app im going to talk way more about all this camera stuff in the s22 ultra review, video, which is coming soon, definitely make sure you subscribe To see that one when it comes out, but in this one i wanted to talk about its default status, which you know, especially in the us now its kind of a running joke that outside of the tech community, weve heard people call it like iphones and galaxies. Like theyve just been so dominant here anyway, that its kind of already understood, but especially with the s22 series, now more than ever, its sort of solidified itself as the default android phone uh, which is crazy.

When you consider what the pixel 6 was supposed to be. Now i used to rag on samsungs software for being incredibly clunky weighted down with bloatware, looking like a cartoon skin on top of android, while the pure google experience from a nexus or a pixel or even a lightweight skin from motorola or oneplus, was the way to Go but today now that oxygen os has gone downhill and the pixels are a buggy mess. Samsungs one ui has evolved into easily one of the most stable performant feature, packed android experiences out there. They loop in the google stuff when its good, like having a google page next to your home screen and the new material. U wallpaper, picker from android 12, which lets you pick colors from your wallpaper to be accent, colors and the menus of your phone. But then they also sprinkle in tons of their own samsung features that you can decide to use if you want, but not only that samsung has also vaulted ahead and is doing some things better than googles own phones. So one thing that ive noticed is theres a new google messages app as the default on these samsung phones, which is cool. If you go to the play store and try to download google messages, it says you already have it installed, but when you open it its a samsung skinned version theyre, the only ones who have been able to do that. So now it has that half screen reachable ui to match the rest of samsungs one ui, then theres.

A new google duo feature that launched where you can essentially watch a youtube. Video, together with someone while on a video call, like apple, did with shareplay over facetime, and this feature has launched in google duo on the galaxy s22s only first. Why so? You have to use a galaxy s22 or s22 ultra to use this feature, which i did we tried it and it worked, but there is no timeline for when this feature will show up on other android phones, including googles own pixel. Even though google made this feature and then on top of that, samsung is promising four years of software updates for the galaxy s 22s after they launch thats more than the three years of software updates that google is promising with their own phone in the pixel. You see what im getting at so the galaxy s. 22S are boring. Yes, but the boringness comes from them, having basically no glaring flaws and makes them incredibly easy to recommend. I wish they were more sustainable. I wish they included a charger in the box, so you didnt have to go out of your way to buy a 45 watt charger and make more waste to actually use that feature, and i can appreciate that some plastics being used in the phone are made from Recycled fishing nets but thats really only a tiny dent in the big picture of samsungs footprint, but in that classic frequently asked question of like if youre in the market, for a flagship phone right now – and i dont know anything about you.

The first phones that im gon na bring up are the iphone 13 and the galaxy s 22, plus and theyve, earned that spot thats been it thanks for watching catch.