Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra first look: S Pen, best zoom lens, better camera performance, exclusive Android features

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The new Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra comes with an S Pen stylus similar to the company’s previous Note models. Photo: Ben Sin

Published: 11:00pm, 9 Feb 2022Updated: 2:03am, 10 Feb 2022

For a decade, Samsung’s mobile division launched two major smartphones a year: the casual, all-rounder Galaxy S series in spring, and the business-driven, stylus-included Galaxy Note series in summer.

This strategy stopped in 2021 when Samsung did not release a Note device, instead giving its summer release slot to the company’s foldable Z series. Many assumed we had seen the last of the Galaxy Note.

Wednesday’s announcement of the Galaxy S22 series showed that isn’t quite the case: the S22 Ultra is essentially a Galaxy Note. Here is our first look at the just-released, highest-end Samsung model.

Design and hardware

The Galaxy S22 Ultra looks similar to the last Galaxy Note device, the Note 20 Ultra that was released in the summer of 2020.

The camera system on the back of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. Photo: Ben Sin

There is a 6.8-inch display with pointed corners, almost invisible bezels and a small hole-punch housing a selfie camera in the centre-top of the screen. In the bottom right corner is a slot that houses the S-Pen stylus. The S22 Ultra even comes in a burgundy colour reminiscent of the Note 20 Ultra’s copper colour.

The camera module has been streamlined – or rather, eliminated. The camera lenses are built into the glass back for a minimalistic look. Or as minimal as five cameras can be, anyway.

This camera system is very similar to the do-it-all system seen in 2021’s S21 Ultra. It features a 108-megapixel main camera with a large image sensor and a fast aperture, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera that can grab sweeping views, and a pair of zoom lenses covering the 3x and 10x focal lengths that are still the best zoom lens in the business.

While the megapixel counts and sensor sizes remain unchanged, Samsung is promising major improvements to camera performance thanks to better computational photography algorithms and the new ISP (image signal processor) in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip powering the phone.