The Galaxy S23 family launches on Android 13 with Samsung's One UI on top, v.5.1. The .1 bit is so far exclusive to the latest trio, but it will be coming to older models too in due time. As expected, 5.1 is not a whole lot different from 5.0 and we've had 5.0 updates for a number of Galaxies already.
Here's how One UI 5.1 fundamentals look on the Galaxy S23 Ultra.
For a more detailed look at the generic UI stuff, we invite you to have a look at the Galaxy S23 or S23+ reviews, while here we'll just cover the S Pen related bits that set the ultimate Galaxy apart from the stylus-less models.
That shouldn't be all that difficult, in fact, because there was not a whole lot of pomp surrounding the S Pen at S23 announcement time, and little in the way of new features or functionality. Not that the S Pen has been lacking it in the past - it's just that things should all be familiar.
The first time you pull the S Pen out of its silo, you're greeted with a quick start guide - the broad strokes, if you will.
Quick Note was one of the big additions last year, and it's still here. It lets you add entire webpages as scrapbook items in Samsung Note, only you need to use the Samsung Internet browser - it doesn't work with third-party ones. Then there's the cookie consent popups that would show up several times in the captured note, but if you're not in Europe, you should mostly be fine.
Handwriting recognition is supported in 100 languages - or at least that's how many options there are in the menu, though some of them are, say, various nationalities of English and German. No word on latency improvements this year, so we'll assume it's the same 2.8ms in Samsung Notes thanks to the AI point prediction. Semi-related, we counted 39 languages that the Galaxy can translate from and 108 positions of languages it can translate into.
Handwriting recognition • Translation
As has been the case for several generations of S Pen-equipped Galaxies, the stylus here is an active one and it has a battery inside as well as a gyro, an accelerometer and Bluetooth connectivity for communicating with the phone without immediate proximity. This enables Air actions - a set of gestures that can be set to execute actions in various apps including the Gallery and browsers (Samsung's own, and also Chrome), but perhaps most usefully - the Camera.
Then again, we'd say button presses are a lot easier to master than the gestures, which we reckon take some dedicated effort to learn and put to use. And that's a sentence we've been repeating for several years with none of us Note/Ultra users actually getting round to doing it. But if it works for you, it works for you.
Staples of S Pen functionality are here to stay, of course. Screen-off memo lets you just pull out the stylus when the phone is in standby and go right ahead and write a note on the black screen.
When you pull out the S Pen with the phone unlocked, the Air command menu appears (that's the default setting, you can turn it off). There are pre-set shortcuts here, which you can customize, and those can be either S Pen features or shortcuts to apps.
Screen off memo • S Pen settings • More settings • Behavior upon removal • Air command
Advanced screenshot capture is one of the S Pen's main use cases. Smart select allows you to take differently shaped screenshots, extract text from them, or pin them on the screen. Alternatively, you can create short GIF animations. Then there's Screen write that takes a fullscreen snap that you can write on with the full set of different pens and brushes (and then crop, if you will). Screen Translate can translate single words into a pre-selected language if you just hover over them.
Screenshots and related functionality: Smart select • Smart select • Save link • Screen write
There are numerous other smaller use cases for the S Pen as part of the Air view set of actions. For, example, you can hover over an image in the gallery for an enlarged preview, or over a calendar entry for more details. You can also scroll up and down by hovering the S-Pen over the edge of the screen.
Perhaps loosely related to the S Pen, from a productivity standpoint, is the powerful split-screen multi-window functionality that Galaxy S23s have - all of them, but we reckon it's all the more important on large-screen Ultra. You get to pick arbitrary split-screen ratios, you can save favorite app pairs, pop-up windows are supported (and you can even change their opacity) - essentially the only thing better for multitasking than the Galaxy S23 Ultra is... the Galaxy Z Fold4.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra, as is the case with the rest of the family, is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset with a twist - it's a Samsung-exclusive version with an overclocked CPU and GPU compared to mainstream SD8G2. We suspect this version will become available as a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2 later this year. Additionally, there is no more regional divide where some countries get an Exynos version - all Galaxy S23 models use the Qualcomm SoC.
The key developments compared to the Gen 1 model are 35% higher performance and 40% improved efficiency of the CPU thanks in no small part to a reworked core configuration (1+2+2+3 in place of the 1+3+4 of before), 25% performance and 45% efficiency bumps on the GPU side, and support for new, faster memory technologies (LPDDR5X and UFS 4.0).
This Samsung-exclusive version of the chip has the X3, 2xA715, 2xA710, and 3xA510 Cortex CPU cores clocked at 3.36GHz, 2.8GHz, 2.8GHz, and 2.0GHz. It's that prime Cortex-X3 core that sets the CPU apart from the regular version of the chipset, where it is clocked at 3.2GHz (technically, 3.19GHz).
The Adreno 740 GPU, meanwhile, is clocked at 719MHz in the Galaxy S23 phones, compared to 680MHz in the rest of the SD8G2-powered models.
All Galaxy S23 phones use LPDDR5X RAM, and all but the base version of the Galaxy S23 Ultra have 12GB of it, to go with either 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage. The entry-level version Ultra, if you can call it that, has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Our review unit is the 12GB/512GB spec.
The usual benchmark suite follows below, starting with GeekBench. You can see here in the single-core result the magnitude of the advantage those extra 0.17GHz give the Galaxy over the iQOO 11 and its mainstream' Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 - it looks about right to us. The OnePlus 11 underperformed here, for one reason or another.
Higher is better
In the multi-core test, the Galaxy's advantage against other SD8G2 handsets diminishes to being barely noticeable. A more pronounced gap remains when comparing models with this year's silicon to 2022 ones.
Higher is better
In Antutu, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is actually outpaced by the iQOO 11, if only barely so. It does maintain a more noticeable advantage over the OnePlus 11, for what that's worth. It's also the third benchmark in a row, by the way, where the Pixel 7 Pro and its Tensor G2 aren't remotely competitive.
Higher is better
In offscreen graphics benchmarks, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is practically on par with the iQOO 11 and the OnePlus 11, with a difference of a frame or two per second separating them. A minor advantage of the Galaxy could be observed in 3DMark Wild Life Extreme, but again, the big gains are when comparing against 2022 models.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
We're looking at a relatively similar story in the onscreen tests, but with slightly different numbers. The Galaxy is on par with the iQOO at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions, while at 1440p the OnePlus is that one bit behind the two.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
We don't normally run storage benchmarks unless it's our first time seeing a new standard. That's not entirely the case with the Galaxy S23 Ultra and its UFS 4.0 memory, since we already saw and tested it on the iQOO 11. Still, we figured we'd do a few quick runs only to find out that the Galaxy isn't quite living up to its potential, particularly when it comes to writing speeds, be it sequential or random. We're not entirely certain what the reason is for this or what to make of it.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
When it comes to performance under sustained load, we know not to expect miracles from the top-tier chipsets. Having said that, we've also been pleasantly surprised with our recent experience with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 when running the stress tests. The S23 and S23+ may not be the best examples, but they did do a respectable job, and the Ultra takes that up a notch, particularly in the CPU test.
Tip us
1.7m 126k
RSS
EV
Merch
Log in I forgot my password Sign up