so about a month ago i put out a tweet that said if this is what samsung's next flagship the galaxy s22 ultra looks like i will shave off a sizeable slit of my eyebrow i was so horrified at the thought of this p-shaped squiggle on the back of a 2022 flagship that i was convinced there was no possible way that samsung would go through with it well [Music]
i was right and what we actually have is shaping up to be a very spicy phone indeed for five key reasons am i eyebrow still there so number five is the software in fact what you're seeing right now is the software that the s22 ultra will almost definitely come with one ui4 i've been testing a beta of it and it's not just a few new features but a visual redesign and i think or at least i hope it also indicates a new direction for samsung more so than any past generation this software just feels alive like when you apply a wallpaper it will pull the key colors from that and use them to theme your entire phone including the inside of some apps it feels more vibrant and playful the widgets feel more interactive than ever before with more fleshed out animations and automatic adjustments to make them more consistent with each other you can resize floating windows on the fly and there's just a lot of subtle things like how the home screen gently comes into focus when you leave an app that make phones with this software fee
l more naturally responsive to your actions plus based on early previews it also looks like the adverts that have started creeping their way into samsung software are got it's a little early to say for sure but it would kind of make sense it's very possible that the pressure that samsung is facing from xiaomi right now is forcing them to hold themselves to a higher standard and if that is what's happening it is good news for not just samsung users but for everyone because other companies will then have to follow suit and as a final icing on the cake it also brings a new feature called ram plus which can repurpose four gigabytes of internal memory as extra ram meaning that if the s22 ultra comes with a 16 gigabyte ram option you will have the equivalent of 20 gigabytes of ram you probably won't need it but it's there in case you do and if you are enjoying this video then a sub for the channel would be one default i'm sorry okay number four is design then i'll admit design is not one of the more important parts of a phone but it's really exciting because just like with the software i think this design indicates that samsung as a company is rolling in the right direction
it doesn't take much digging to see that this brand has gone through some very questionable phases as did we all but phones that looked like plasters cases that look like bikinis or just some straight up head scratchingly boring phones but for the last year almost everything that's come out of samsung's doors has had strong design the s21 ultra looks like a stealthy ninja phone the z flip 3 is minimal and flat and all these limited edition phones and i would go as far as to say that i think this s22 ultra looks even better this is not a 100 confirmed and finalized design we are still a couple of months away from launch but this feels right
i think it's extremely close and assuming that they can pull this look off it's not just unique the only phone that looks close would be the lg velvet which was one of lg's best design phones in my opinion but it would also eliminate the two unfortunate side effects of having a big fat camera module wobbling when you're on a table and constant finger collisions there's apparently going to be a black and a green which look kind of whatever but i would do bad things for these white and red ones these are a statement but there's also a less obvious design change here it's increasingly looking like the s22 ultra will not just be the next s-series phone but also the next note series phone you might know that samsung skipped launching a galaxy note in 2021 and so my best guess as to what they're planning to do is to just pull their resources to make one phone that will appeal to both categories of users it feels like a strange move like given that the majority of samsung flagship purchases buy an s-series instead of a note series phone it's fair to assume that most aren't users of that s pen but it doesn't look like it's coming at the cost of anything the battery is apparently still going to be a huge 5 000 milliamp hours the charging power will actually be upgraded from 25 watts to 45 watts the camera system has been brought inside the body instead of pushing it further out to be able to fit the pen my best guess is that they will make the main body a little thicker just to accommodate everything but for an ultra phone with this much stuff i'm okay with that because if you are going to have this s pen as a feature then i think it's really important that you can actually fit it inside like with the z-fold three last year you might remember that i kind of raged at the fact that samsung pitched that phone as a galaxy note replacement regularly reminding us of how it had s pen functionality but the simple fact that the pen wasn't built in meant that only like 10 of people were actually going to go out and buy it that they'd need a separate case to store it and that they'd have to remember to charge it individually to use it but to have the thing built inside of the s22 ultra would be a strong positive number three is the cameras if you've been following samsung closely you'll have seen that two months ago they unveiled something absolutely crazy something seemingly so far ahead that it would have been instantly enough to replenish anyone's dwindling faith in the company a 200 megapixel image sensor made to feature in their upcoming phones but before we get carried away by hype i don't think their next flagship phone will actually use this sensor according to the leak ice universe he is saying with 100 certainty that this s22 ultra will instead use a 108 megapixel main camera a 12 megapixel ultrawide camera and then two zoom cameras a three time zoom and a ten time zoom camera both at 10 megapixel or in other words basically the same camera system as the s21 ultra this year i mean technically the zoom cameras will have new image sensors but this is not going to be some sort of zoom into a different planets type of experience and i've got to be clear here i am not happy about the fact that this spec sheet looks basically the same as this ones the fact that they've announced this 200 megapixel sensor months ago and yet they won't have it in next year's flagship is nothing short of a buzz kill and while we're at it it is also making me a little concerned this idea of not using their most advanced technology so that they can have a nice pretty design it is an indicator that samsung might be considering form over function and like the fact that they had a fully fledged samsung launch event last month where the main product announcement was that you can now like customize the color of your z flip 3 it does make me feel a little uneasy as someone whose priority is the technology
itself but equally using the same cameras as last year might actually make a lot of sense here from a business perspective because you've got to remember that their flagship from two years ago the galaxy s20 ultra that was packed to the seams with new tech 108 megapixel camera 100 times zoom enormous battery it didn't meet sales expectations the galaxy z flip 3 though which is fashion focused but quite lacking on the specs front sold more than expected but it might not just be good for samsung it might also be better for the consumer the main reason that i'm not mad and instead curiously optimistic about these cameras is it's something that's been on my mind recently yes i am a nerd you might have noticed that over the last few years we have had so many phones coming out claiming huge improvements in camera hardware it's sensors that are 50 larger lenses that will let in 200 more light but in almost every single one of these situations the end results are rather anticlimactic it's incredibly confusing for consumers because of course letting in 200 more light is going to mean significantly better photos right so why is that not happening well i think it's a clear indicator that smartphones are increasingly relying on processing rather than optics to take their photos i watched a really interesting video recently where someone took the same photos on the original iphone from 2007 and the iphone 12 pro and obviously there was a ridiculously huge gap between their outputs not even in the same tier not even in the same universe however he then used a series of really powerful pieces of software to enhance the original iphone's photos to the point where actually they weren't nearly as far off as you'd expect them to be and this is just it the minute they were able to replicate the effects of beefy camera hardware with machine learning and software well why wouldn't you it will mean that every phone you make will be cheaper it gives you many more options like being able to refocus shots after you've taken them and it means you have more power to improve the camera performance later via software updates however i guess you could say this is the downside because of this it's becoming really hard to know how good a phone camera is going to be until you've used it it's no longer about the specs of the camera it's not even about how powerful the chip is it's the unmeasurable software optimization that spells out how they work together that's becoming the key and so we end up with situations like this the iphone 12 for example has a really good camera even with a tiny sensor and just 12 megapixels of resolution and yet this honor 50 has an extremely poor camera even with a sizable sensor and a 108 megapixel resolution having better camera hardware will increase the sealing of what you're able to technically achieve but because no company is squeezing the most out of the hardware they already have we've regularly seen bigger improvements to image quality in a year where their hardware hasn't changed and the company has just spent that time optimizing what they do have and so what i'm trying to say about this s22 ultra is that while the camera hardware looks pretty inconsequential and on the face of it disappointing i'm excited to see if it means that we'll actually have a highly polished and optimized experience because of it and if we do get that then i think there's a very good chance that the s22 ultra will be the best phone camera we'll have seen up until that point the s21 ultra is already close and this is exactly what it needs number two then is the screen and to be honest there's not a huge amount of detail about it yet but a few key things going for it one it doesn't look like samsung will opt for an under display camera one day this tech will be great but that day is not today and i was a little concerned when i saw that they used one of these on their 1500 z-fold three and that there was a very severe hit to the image quality from it but thankfully it looks like they're prioritizing pure performance here secondly we've seen a leak of the apparent screen protector that's going to go on this phone and it's a solid indicator that in fact the screen's borders are going to be even slimmer than last generation we are talking fractions of a millimeter here so not a major shift but given that a lot of phones do look the same from the front as they did like two years ago it's good to see some improvement and three is just the simple fact that samsung makes really good screens rich colors super high peak brightness no weird looking corners jutting out the s21 ultra was labeled by many as the best oled screen to date and there's a good chance the s22 ultra will follow in its footsteps there's already leaks to suggest that it will be a record holder but number one is something a little more tangible it's no secret that for a while now samsung's been having a bit of a crisis with its own in-house exynos chipsets for the last five years these chips have been anywhere from slightly behind their snapdragon equivalents to so far behind that they felt a generation apart however the crown jewel the supposed savior of exynos will finally be coming to fruition in this next phone and there's a lot of talk that this will turn samsung's single biggest weakness into its single biggest strength i'm of course talking about their collaboration with amd samsung has confirmed that their next exynos chip is going to have its graphics calls designed by amd using the same architecture that they used to build the playstation 5. and this is likely to mean three things one performance jump i'm expecting anywhere from a 30 to a 50 leap in graphics 2. better thermal management which is important because past exynos chips have managed to lose as much as 50 percent of their performance with continued use as they've gotten hot and so had to dial down how fast they were running to control that heat and finally new technologies with i think the headline one probably being ray tracing for those of you who didn't follow the ps5 launch ray tracing is essentially a hyper realistic way of rendering light in games it's seen very much as a generational leap over what came before it and if you've played a game that uses this tech you'll have realized how game changing it is i love this idea of the smartphone being a proper gaming console and it makes total sense given that for most people it is the gadget that we make sure we have everywhere it is the most portable most connected device we own however the one thing that does somewhat hamper this excitement is on the app
developer side of things developers do not treat mobile the same way that they treat consoles when you design a game to say the playstation 5 you have the reassurance that every single person is using exactly the same hardware and so you can utilize that hardware and all of its technologies to make the most beautiful immersive game possible but when you design a game for mobile you have to account for the fact that yes while some people are using say a next-gen galaxy s 22 ultra equally some are using a 50 alcatel or maybe even a two dollar passion fruit and this means that if you want your game to be successful you have to build it around the lowest common denominator and so going off past history with stuff like this ray tracing in mobile games won't become a thing until the majority can support it so i don't see this as turning the gaming market upside down more as the beginning of a new era but that's still exciting to see i've literally spent the last 45 minutes trying to cover my eyebrows in face putty yeah this ain't gonna work to find out if the new google pixel 6 pro is worth the hype click here or to understand the increasingly strange situation with huawei that video is here my name is aaron this is mister who's the boss i'll catch you in the next one
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