Samsung has officially released their much anticipated Galaxy S22 line of phones. And as expected, they did not disappoint or hold back on the cool specs.
The Galaxy S22 range includes the following models: Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22 Plus and Galaxy S22 Ultra. There is a choice of four colors for the S22 and S22 Plus: Phantom Black, Phantom White, Green and White. The S22 Ultra is available in Phantom Black, Phantom White or Green and also Burgundy.
The Galaxy S22 and S22 Plus are large and small variants of the same basic design. They are very similar to last year’s Galaxy S21 but the size has been shrunk a little and parts of the display, rear cameras and internals have been upgraded. Samsung has significantly changed up the design of the Galaxy S22. It has an S Pen built into the bottom of the phone and the back is unique as the cameras sit separately.
All three models have ultrasonic fingerprint sensors under the display. They also all come with IP68 water/dust resistance keeping inner components safe. The screens are super tough thanks to Gorilla Victus Plus, the toughest Corning-made glass you can currently find on a phone.
The Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22 Plus have two sizes of the same screen. Both have FHD resolution, a 120Hz maximum refresh rate and 10Hz minimum, and up to 240Hz touch sampling rate. The S22 is 6.1 inches while the S22 Plus is 6.6 inches.
The Galaxy S22 Ultra uses the largest display on offer at 6.8 inches. It features curved left and right edges. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate but can go as low as 1Hz for battery efficiency. The resolution is boosted to QHD+ for extra detail when watching video or playing games.
The screens on all three phones use Samsung’s new “Vision Booster”, a feature to adjust the display’s colors and make it look better in different lighting. The S22 is rated for 1,300 nits, and the S22 Plus and S22 Ultra for 1,750 nits of brightness.
The S22 and S22 Plus have the same selection of cameras. The back consists of a 50MP main camera, 12MP ultra wide camera and 10MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom. The front has a single 10MP camera.
All except one camera of the S22 Ultra take these specs up a notch. The main camera features a 108MP sensor, and it has two 10MP telephoto cameras; one with 3x optical zoom and another with 10x optical zoom. The selfie camera has a higher resolution at 40MP.
Samsung didn’t hold back on the software either. “Nightography” features will help the S22 cameras capture more light and color detail from shots taken in low light. A new Auto Framing mode allows the phone to keep track of up to ten people in shot at once.
Officially, Samsung says the S22 series runs on a 4nm processor. The chip you get will depend on where you buy your phone. US buyers will get the S22 with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, whereas the UK (or anyone else outside the US) with have theirs equipped with the Exynos 2200. While Snapdragon chips may score slightly better on computing benchmarks than Samsung’s Exnynos ones, the 2200 is quite interesting as it has introduced AMD RDNA-powered GPU. This could make gaming a higher quality experience on the S22 sold on global markets.
Whichever chip you get, there will be 8GB RAM, and either 128GB or 256GB of storage with the S22 and S22 Plus. The S22 Ultra has a choice of either 8GB or 12GB RAM, and 128GB, 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage capacity.
In line with smaller sizes, the battery capacities have shrunk as well for the S22 and S22 Ultra. The S22 offers a 3,700 mAh battery and the S22 Plus a 4,500 mAh battery. There is no change in the capacity of the S22 Ultra compared to the S21 Ultra. It uses a 5,000 mAh cell.
Charging speeds on the S22 have remained the same as compared to the S21. The S22 Plus and S22 Ultra have gained wired charging support. None of these phones come with chargers in the box.
Samsung is now promising 4 years of software support for the S22 series. This means you will get to keep using the phone with all the latest Android features for longer.
Only the S22 Ultra works with an S Pen. Instead of only being a separate accessory like last year with the S21, you now get an S Pen with the phone that will be kept in the phone when not in use. The S Pen you get is the most responsive Samsung’s ever made, the company says. It’s apparently 70% more responsive than the S21 Ultra’s S Pen, which should using it feel as similar to using actual pen and paper.
All the S22 phones offer 5G support, both sub-6GHz and mmWave. The S22 Plus and s22 Ultra get a few special benefits over the base S22. They get to use the Wi-Fi 6E standard for higher speed data transfers, which Samsung claims is twice as fast the standard Wi-Fi 6 capabilities of the S22.
Samsung has kept the starting prices for the S22 the same as those for the S21 series. Those are $799 for the Galaxy S22, $999 for the Galaxy S22 Plus and $1,199 for the Galaxy S22 Ultra. If you want to pre-order the phone, you can do so as from yesterday (February 9), with the retail release coming on February 25. Samsung is offering free upgrades to the next highest storage capacity version of your chosen phone if you buy a 128GB or 256GB version.
The Galaxy S22 Series is an impressive range of phones. And with the new features and software updates Samsung surely met and maybe even exceeded expectations.