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00:00Hey what's up, MKBHD here. So, we do have some new Samsung phones for early in the
00:07year as we usually expect them. This time it's S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra. Spoiler alert,
00:15I've played with them for like 2 hours, they are very similar to last year's phones. Which
00:19is great, those were rock solid. But that also means that I can probably make this like
00:23the shortest MKBHD video of the past year. So, I'm going to try. Let's get through it.
00:29Ok, so the lineup is S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra, but there are the same 4 colors across the
00:34entire lineup. So, Phantom Black, Green, Lavender, and Cream. All pretty tame looking I think.
00:41And as expected, the S23 and S23+, are basically identical other than their size, which means
00:46you can either get the smaller one with the 6.1 inch 1080p OLED and a 3900mAh battery,
00:52or the bigger one with the 6.6 inch 1080p OLED and a 4700mAh battery. Also, the bigger
00:58one apparently has slightly faster wired charging, 45W peak versus 25W, and a higher
01:04base storage. There's 128 on the small one, but 256GB starting on the Plus. That's it.
01:11So aside from that, you're looking at the same general shape and design as last year.
01:15Flat display, you know the ports and the speakers at the bottom, the button locations look basically
01:19the same, still got wireless charging, still got IP ratings. Really the only thing that's
01:24updated here from the S22s are the chip and the cameras. So the new chips are the Snapdragon
01:318 Gen 2. And if you pay attention to the presentation, Samsung's doing this thing where they're calling
01:35it like Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy, as if it's sort of a customized chip. But when
01:40I asked Samsung about this, it seems like basically they're doing a slightly higher
01:44max clock speed. Maybe it's just binning for all we know. So I don't expect it to be a
01:48dramatic difference versus other phones that just have Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but you know,
01:53that's something we'll test. We'll see in the full review. But I mean, you know, the
01:56phones feel fast and Samsung phones always feel this fast when they're brand new, so
01:59I'm not super worried. But the other new thing that I mentioned is the cameras. So these
02:04new camera systems are refreshed across the board. New sensors, new image processing,
02:09new AI remastering of photos. So it's a 50 megapixel main camera paired with a 12 megapixel
02:15ultra wide and a 3x telephoto. Playing with it briefly, you know, the images I took,
02:20I thought actually looked really good. It's obviously a super brightly lit setup room.
02:25So I will say they also look very HDR-y and dare I say a bit pixel-y in this situation,
02:31but that tracks with Samsung's claims of a much better improved dynamic range. I'm just
02:35very curious to get these out into the real world and see how it stacks up. So definitely
02:39get subscribed to see the review when that comes out and I can actually test them. One
02:42thing I saw that I didn't like though, was the presence of a bit of shutter lag. This
02:47isn't exactly new with some Samsung phones, but sometimes you take a photo of something
02:51fast moving and you think you got it, but then it turns out the image was captured
02:55slightly later than when your finger hit the shutter. So something to keep an eye on just
02:59because if I notice it in this perfect lighting, it's probably going to strike again. But there
03:04is also a new selfie camera, 12 megapixels, just a lot of new imaging stuff here. So that's
03:08mainly what's new with this incremental S23 update. So S23 starts at $799 and S23 Plus
03:16starts at $999. If you're really trying to pay $200 more for the bigger phone, but there's
03:20also the $1199 S23 Ultra. Again, a pretty similar design to last year, but as you may
03:28have noticed, there's really two noticeable changes for those of us who have touched and
03:32held last year's phone. One, the camera bumps are all just a little bit bigger with these
03:36new pronounced rings around them. I'll talk about the new cameras in a second, but then
03:40two, when you're holding it in the hand, they've changed the shape of the sides to be much
03:45more flat. So the whole phone is just much more boxy and I like it. I really like it.
03:50Samsung says this was a reshaped curve at the edges to better optimize for the S Pen
03:55that is still here. I assumed this would mean either they're making room for a slightly
04:00bigger battery or maybe they can compress the dimensions and make a slightly smaller
04:04phone. But the battery size is still the huge 5,000 mAh from last year and the phone is
04:09still huge. So I mean, it feels like it's mostly for aesthetics and feel in the hand
04:13and just have something different from last year, but I do, I actually really like it.
04:18I also did notice, interestingly, some of these phones I was recording with were flickering
04:23more than usual, but just on camera. Like I'm not aware of any big differences in the
04:28adaptive refresh rates. These are still LTPO displays that go from one to 120 Hertz. And
04:33I played with a few settings when I noticed it flickering, but I couldn't really figure
04:37it out. Not that it's a big deal. It didn't flicker to my eyes. And these are great looking
04:41screens with a new peak brightness of 1,750 nits across the board, which is excellent,
04:47but that's just something different that I noticed to keep my eye on. Really though,
04:50the cameras are the biggest thing in the ultra refresh as well. Again, new sensors across
04:56the board headlined by a 200 megapixel main camera. There's also the 12 megapixel ultra
05:02wide and a pair of telephoto cameras, the 3X and the 10X. There's going to be a bunch
05:07of new camera stuff to test in here from the improved optical image stabilization across
05:11the board to the better low light performance, maybe with 16 pixels binning into one and
05:17kicking out a 12 megapixel photo to the galaxy camera feature integration in certain apps
05:22like Instagram and also the 200 megapixel mode. I want to see how good the actual 200
05:28megapixel files really are. Not that I print out photos and set them on canvas or anything,
05:33but you could if you wanted to, but I think it's clear. The bottom line is the camera
05:37system is one of the biggest differentiators between the ultra and the rest of the lineup.
05:41Aside from that, it's going to be a pretty familiar phone to the one that I gave the
05:45best big smartphone award last year. It's still a 6.8 inch edge to edge 1440p OLED display.
05:53There's still the, you know, snapdragon 8 gen 2 for galaxy. You can get up to a terabyte
05:57of storage, still the IP rating. We already know there will be no chargers in any of
06:01the boxes. So this video sponsor Anker's ACE charger is definitely the move here. This
06:06313 charger is way smaller than Samsung's official one. Thanks to gallium nitride,
06:10AKA GAN technology. Plus it folds up, but it'll still guarantee the 45 Watts of peak
06:15charging power that the ultra supports with super fast charging 2.0. So it fully charges
06:19in about an hour and it does it safely with things like current regulation over temperature
06:24protection and more, or there's their 312 charger, which is a good pair to match with
06:28the 25 watt peak charging of the S23 and still smaller and more efficient than Samsung's.
06:32So if you're looking for a powerful charger for S23, S23 plus or S23 ultra, this Anker
06:38ACE charger is the move and I'm going to link it below.