The battle of the Samsung Galaxy Ultras, S22 Ultra vs S23 Ultra vs S24 Ultra

Samsung has been quite mighty with its Ultra flagships in recent years. Making a huge hype in the market with the 100X zoom, top-notch display, and exceptional portraits, and offering the best, money can buy in the Android world. The 2024 flagship Galaxy S24 Ultra is also no different. It catches up with the crowd’s expectations with the latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for the Galaxy, a solid quad camera setup, a gorgeous AMOLED panel, an S-pen, and so on.

But today, this is not a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review. Instead, let’s talk about its comparison with its predecessors– the S22 Ultra and S23 Ultra. How many things have changed inside and out? Up to what extent have the cameras gotten better plus the performance jump? Let’s find that out in our ‘Battle of the Ultras, S22 Ultra vs S23 Ultra vs S24 Ultra”.

S22 Ultra vs S23 Ultra vs S24 Ultra Specifications:

S22 Ultra vs S23 Ultra vs S24 Ultra:

Design

Commencing with the design side of things, the three Ultras look pretty identical from the rear side. Taking a quick sight is not enough to segregate between the three. But if you look closely, the S22 Ultra’s camera module is a bit smaller as compared to the S23 and S24 Ultras’.

Also, if you look at the frames, the curvy middle chassis has now gone flat with the S24 Ultra while the S23 Ultra boasts a flat frame but with slightly curved edges. And the aerospace-grade aluminum material is now replaced with a lighter yet premium, titanium material on the S24 Ultra.

Flipping on the front side, the latest guy now bears a completely flat screen, bidding farewell to the curved screen culture on the Samsung flagship. So, let’s call it an all-boxy phone, like the iPhone. Well, I’m not a hater of the boxy frame design, but the S22 Ultra curved frame just adds more value to my liking. It feels a lot easier to hold that phone, rather than the boxy S24 Ultra.

Display

Talking of the display quality, all three siblings boast a super sharp AMOLED panel with a fast 120Hz refresh rate and QHD+ resolution. The latter one has even gotten better on the S23 and S24 Ultra, bumping a slight of more pixels resolutions. But if you put all of them together and play a 4K HDR video, you wouldn’t be complaining on either of the devices. The S22 Ultra even slightly provides a punchier output as compared to the two.

Overall, the 120Hz feels snappy all along the board. Content watching is a visual treat on YouTube or other streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video with HDR 10
+ certification. I, however, still lounge for Dolby Vision support, which is again missing from a Samsung flagship in 2024. Aside from that, be it for an average user or a phone maniac like me, the flagship AMOLED panel on all three would leave no space to complain much at all!

Performance

Okay let’s board the performance ship, shall we? The Ultra flagships have always been about choosing the best iterations of chips available. After departing from its Exynos lineup of SoCs, the South Korean tech giant has been opting for the Snapdragon counterpart for the Ultra monikers, at least.

But things might change from next year, with rumors floating around the entire Galaxy S25 lineup going for the Exynos 2500 chip all across the globe. But hey, that’s still left to see, so, let’s get back to the present.

Speed Test and Gaming

Comparing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy against the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 of the S23 Ultra and S22 Ultra respectively, a performance bump is pretty imminent. It’s not a day-and-night difference while casually using the trio, but I ran a speed test and the S24 Ultra did win by a few seconds margin.

Which is quite negligible for a normal user, so I conducted some gaming tests as well. The latest phone does perform better on PUBG, which is quite expected from a 2024 flagship. I’m not gonna bore you with murmuring the stats and fps data here. So, here’s a table for you to keep things simple and clear.

Thermals

Not only the fps, but, the thermals on the S24 Ultra were also relatively cool with the S22 Ultra generating more heat to compare. But to be honest, if you own an S22 Ultra, you really don’t need to jump to the latest one, just for the sake of performance. The 8 Gen 1 is still a powerful chip for gaming. Although, you need to find a way to beat the heat of the 8 Gen 1 while gaming. 

Besides gaming, the OneUI 6.1 experience on all three phones is just as smooth as silk. The only edge on the S24 Ultra is its AI features and 7 whopping years of OS updates. While the AI features are scheduled to arrive for the other two as well, somewhere in the near future.

Cameras

Finally, my favorite section is here– the darn cameras! All of these guys boast a quad camera setup with two zoom lenses actually. The primary camera has gone up from 108MP on the S22 Ultra to 200MP on the S23 Ultra and S24 Ultra. The 3X telephoto and 10X optical zoom lens on the S22 Ultra and S23 Ultra are pretty identical while the latest guy has skipped the 10X one with a 5X optical zoom lens with a 10X digital zoom support.

All in all, I took hundreds of pictures from all the lenses of all three cameras, and here’s what I have found!

Daylight

The daylighting images look good on all three devices but the color science separates each of the generations here. The S22 Ultra clicks super punchy photos with brightened-up tones on almost everything. Over time, it feels like Samsung has dialed down the saturation and gone for a natural look, coming from S23 Ultra to S24 Ultra. The latest flagship produces more of a contrasty outlook with less flaunted colors than its past iterations.

Daylight

1 of 18

Ultrawide

Moving to the ultrawide imagery, the color tuning remains the same– the S22 Ultra with a vibrant tone, the S23 Ultra with a less vibrant output, yet with details, and the S24 Ultra with a contrasty output with sharper details. But the latter one’s contrasty game doesnt go well in every condition.

Ultrawide

1 of 15

I found its Ultawide outputs to look darker with the lifting of the shadows. So, if I have to give an edge to the two-year-old S22 Ultra’s brightened-up color tones which actually look good in most of the scenarios. Likewise, the S23 Ultra stays in the middle ground. 

Portraits

Speaking of the portraits, the 1X outputs from the S22 Ultra look too vibrant for my eyes, producing a reddish tone. The S23 Ultra produces warm-looking portraits and on the other hand, the S24 Ultra goes for a more natural and contrasty outlook. If you zoom in, the S24 Ultra’s 1X portraits look like an oil painting to my eyes, so I would pick the S23 Ultra here. But color preference is all subject to be personal, you can either go with any of them.

1X Portraits

1 of 12

Getting to the 3X portraits, the S24 Ultra beats both of them. The outputs are just as good as it should be. It shouldn’t be controversial if I say, the S24 Ultra is kind of taking some pages out of the Phone’s portrait color science. It’s a good thing anyway, so it is what it is, right?

3X Portraits

1 of 21

Selfies

Alright, when it comes to selfies, the color game remains the same. So, I’m gonna go with the S23 Ultra here with a slightly yellowish tone but decently sharp outputs. If you ask me why, the contrasty selfies on the S24 Ultra don’t look too appealing in most of the scenarios while the S22 Ultra’s red tone is a turn-off!

Selfies

1 of 9

Night

When the sun goes down, the night mode on all three models shines. There is not a massive difference but I noticed some slight improvements on the new iterations.

Nighttime

1 of 18

Videos

All of the three devices can shoot 8K videos but, 8K videos have still not become a norm. So, I shot 4K 60fps videos where the S24 Ultra’s stabilization is a tat bit better. When you set the frame at 30fps, the other phones’ stabilization is also pretty darn good! But one thing I must say, during my test, the S24 Ultra unexpectedly heated more than the rest two, while recording videos.

Battery Charging and Others

As expected, the S24 Ultra’s battery life is slightly better than the other two. The S22 Ultra with a “hot” SD 8 Gen 1 chip tends to drain quicker plus it’s already a two years old phone. So, a solid one-day usage is an easy cup of tea for both S23 and S24 Ultra. Meanwhile, the 45W charging is common across the board, which takes an hour plus some minutes for a full charge.

Furthermore, the S-pen on all three phones is pretty handy to take quick notes or igniting that artistic soul inside you for a sketch. The latency has improved in the latest one, but the S22 Ultra’s S-Pen still feels swift.

S22 Ultra vs S23 Ultra vs S24 Ultra Review: Conclusion

Okay so, coming to the conclusion of the S22 Ultra vs S23 Ultra vs S24 Ultra review, I feel that the S24 Ultra is undoubtedly a solid option. Arguably the best Android phone money can buy at present! You get the best-in-class performance, top-notch portraits, and excellent battery life. But, I do miss the 10X optical zooming capability here. So, if you are coming from the S23 Ultra, I don’t find a need to upgrade to this one just for the sake of a performance boost. Your phone still packs a punch in all the other aspects.

But if you are using an S22 Ultra and looking for an upgrade, you might want to switch to the S24 Ultra for extra goodies! Wherein, I still think the S22 Ultra is rocking with a powerful chip and good cameras in 2024. But, if the latest and greatest tech fancies you, the S24 Ultra becomes a no-brainer choice!