In This Article:
Samsung has officially taken the wraps off of its latest flagship smartphone lineup: the $799 Galaxy S22, $999 Galaxy S22+, and $1,199 Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Available for pre-order on Feb. 9, and on sale Feb. 25, the trio of phones share many of the same features including their 4-nanometer Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon processors — but they have a number of differences too. Here are the most important distinctions.
Galaxy S22 Ultra
-
6.8-inch display
-
Built-in S Pen stylus
-
Quad-camera system
-
Improved low-light photo capabilities
-
Up to 1TB of storage
-
Starts at $1,199
Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+
-
S22 gets a 6.1-inch screen, while S22+ gets a 6.6-inch panel
-
No S Pen stylus
-
3 cameras: Wide-angle, ultra-wide angle, and telephoto
-
Up to 256GB of storage
-
S22 starts at $799, S22 Ultra starts at $999
The S22 Ultra is the standout of the line thanks to its inclusion of Samsung’s S Pen stylus, which is normally reserved for Samsung’s Note line of smartphones. In fact, the Galaxy S22 Ultra is more or less a Note in all but its name.
Heck, its body even looks like the Note, thanks to its boxy design and flat top and bottom edges. This also means that Samsung is putting the nail in the coffin for the Note line, which first debuted in 2011 and was the first mainstream big-screen smartphone.
Up front the S22 Ultra has a massive 6.8-inch AMOLED 2x display, which offers bright, vibrant colors and deep, inky blacks. As with prior versions of Samsung’s smartphones, the S22 Ultra’s screen cascades off of its left and right edges, adding more display real estate.
Like many of today’s top-tier smartphones, the S22 Ultra’s screen features a dynamic refresh rate that can lower the number of times the screen updates with new information from as low as once per second when reading text on a site, all the way up to 120 times per second when playing high-end games.
The S22 Ultra also features Samsung’s new Vision Booster technology, which automatically adjusts the color contrast and brightness of images to improve overall display quality when viewing content in direct sunlight.
But the S22 Ultra’s main draw is the S Pen, which is used to do everything from jotting down quick notes to sketching. And like the Note line, the Galaxy S22 Ultra has a built-in slot for the stylus, so you don’t have to worry about losing it.
Around back, the S22 Ultra sports a quartet of cameras. There’s a wide-angle lens, an ultra-wide angle lens, a telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom, and a secondary telephoto lens with 10x optical zoom. Apple’s iPhone 13 Pro Max, by comparison, has three cameras: a wide-angle, ultra-wide angle, and a telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom.