When I first received this phone, I was amazed. The build quality is great, though I would have liked the curved edges that I have seen on the S23 Ultra. The screen has stayed free from micro-scratches, and the Victus 2 glass is mostly scratch-free.
The titanium frame is also strong, and there are no scratches on my device. The handset also feels very light in the hand. The S-Pen is also very sturdy to use, though my cap got broken off (someone stepped on it). Overall, the build quality is very good.
The screen is also great in most lighting conditions. It is a 6.8-inch adaptive 120 Hz QHD display. It claims to get up to 2600 nits of brightness, and it has an anti-reflective coating applied. The screen gets bright enough, though in the bright Houston sun, sometimes black text or maps (dark mode) get washed out and it can be hard to read. The screen seems to perform better in light mode.
QHD looks great on the screen. I was not able to tell much of a difference between HD and QHD display. However, on my S22 Plus, I was able to see some pixels if I looked close enough.
The screen also has support for an S Pen. I use the S Pen a lot and it works well. However, while the phone claims to scroll at 120 Hz with the S Pen, it seems more laggy than finger scrolling.
The Spen is amazing though. Screen off notes work well thought the actions of pinning the note to the AOD is a bit slow and inefficient. However when you do get there its a great feature. Samsung Notes can also transcribe the screen off notes into text.
The Spen has air commands and I have a hard time remembering them. Howeverv they are useful when you remeber them. The screenshot function is also very useful. The drawing and writing in Samsung Notes is good though the writing to text features rebd to ne inaccurate.
The S-Pen software is also very picky. For example the write spen to text is inaccurate so I turned it off. However it just keeps coming back sometimes. The write to text function of the keyboard is slightly better. As an input device the S-Pen is amazing. It great to edit videos. Horizontal scrolling is also a useful feature which allows moving items on the screen without touching it.
The one problem with the S Pen is the lack of consistency in applications. For instance, erasing is done by holding the button in Notes and Screen Off, but in third-party applications, it may be for something else. I also wish the SPen had more features in terms of screen control.
Samsung has added more customization features with the Penastic to enable quick launching of applications and to have sounds when you pull the pen out. I have mine set to the Intel SFX.
The phones software has been decent to good to say the least. It has all the great multitasking features like a clear all button (cough cough Apple), split screen software, Goodlock customizations etc. However, dragging notifications to the center (pop up view) causes the apps to open on the bottom of the screen. This is a major inconvenience.
As for the rest of the software it the same OneUI from Samsung. I like the launcher and the Spen feature and overall the software is good.
The hardware of the phone is good but needs more tweaking. The earphones of this phone are loud. They're amazing for phone calls and they literally feel like they are thumping the ears. The GPS accuracy is good but not as good as the NUU phone. It's is a consistent +/- 12ft GPS accuracy in testing and seems a bit less accurate in Google Maps AR and walking directions.
The call quality, as I said, is great. Haptics are good even with my Newdery case on the phone. It is very clicky and has a very firm vibration. The speakers are also loud enough. Now the battery, in my opinion leave some to be desired.
The 5000 mAh battery should be able last a whole day. It doesn't keep up as much. I was able to get 5 hrs of screen on time. The battery says it can last 10-12hrs with mixed use. I wish it could last 24 hrs or 2 days of mixed use.
However, with seven years of updates, I hope this gets fixed. The charging speed is also okay. Forty-five watts looks good on paper, but 60 watts or more would be better. However, with Samsung planning to support this phone for seven years, I can see why they would not want battery degradation.
The processing power is pretty good. I am able to run Layla AI on my device fairly well, as well as other offline AI programs in Termux. Voice transcription is also faster on this phone than on the S22 Plus, showing off the AI capabilities of the handset.
For basic usage and other (online) AI apps, the phone rarely uses over 50% of its processing power. The phone also rarely gets hot to the touch when in use. There is also 12 GB of RAM here, and I only use 9 GB at the most, so it should be good for a few years. Video export from editing is also fast, though Lumafusion tends to freeze sometimes. Editing the sky in photos and videos and animating Ava Harper (with the S Pen) in Motion Ninja and Motionleap is pretty snappy and responsive.
The phone's chip is also too fast for its own good. Emulation in WinLator or VectraVM (terrible people behind VectrasVM) is not yet supported on the 8Gen3 chip. Image upscaling in the Gallery also seems fast, but I do not have a benchmark against other phones.
The Online AI features are also good but need more work. Chat translation is good but it doesn't support every application such as Instagram. Circle to search is also good. Voice typing has been improved but it could be better as well as offline transcription. Bixby is good but does not have an AI update as of now.
Image editing works well though I wish it was faster and worked offline. The same goes for the keyboard 'writing style.' Samsung notes image generation is good though I wish Samsung Notes had an AI sorting function that puts notes in automatic folders. I also believe that the summaries in Notes and Internet could work offline and I wish Samsung AI had more AI features like an on-device search (like Microsoft Recall).
The cameras are amazing. In the 12 MP mode, it's faster than my S22 plus. The expert RAW mode is also great. The 200 MP mode is slow, but it does capture more detail. I wish the transition from camera to holding down for video were faster. The zoom is good and the transition between lenses is not as janky.
 |
| 12 MP photo of Plant Regular Mode |
The camera does have some flaws, though. The 200 MP camera has some smudges, and low light video could be a bit less grainy. The ultrawide should also be a higher resolution. My test is comparing the 0.9 to 1x zoom, and 1x is a lot better. Overexposed images and high dynamic range tend to be a bit better than in the S22 Plus, though I long for the day the phone can take a good picture through a bright window and the indoors.
Dex is also good. It can output to a 15-inch monitor with no problem. The browser is fast, though I wish it had more desktop app support. Here, you can really tell the difference between the 12 and 200 MP images.
In conclusion, this is a good phone that needs a bit of work. The battery could be better, but the signal is good. However, sometimes I have to manually switch to 4G. 5G connections seem fast. The GPS is good but not the best. The screen is responsive but not bright enough. The S Pen is great but not as feature-backed as I would like. The AI is good but not as capable offline. Samsung has the platform; now they just need the apps. 3.5/5
God bless, and Tech Talk to You later!!!
Please make the comments constructive, and vulgarity will not be tolerated!