Galaxy S22 Series

[CP5670]

That's what I figured. The pen is cool but I'm not sure how much I would use it in practice, and the camera is the only other thing I care about.

 

[pauldun170]

Oof.
S8+ is still going strong. Still gets through the day on original battery.

Yet I'm spending way too much damn time eyeballing the S22+

Fortunately the 256gb model is in short supply. Maybe procrastinating will result in me celebrating 6 years with the S8+

 

[Commodus]

Oof.
S8+ is still going strong. Still gets through the day on original battery.

Yet I'm spending way too much damn time eyeballing the S22+

Fortunately the 256gb model is in short supply. Maybe procrastinating will result in me celebrating 6 years with the S8+

I'm not going to help here: I've had an opportunity to spend some time with the S22+ and it's very nice. It'd obviously represent a huge leap in screen tech, performance and camera quality versus your S8+... but as someone who recently acquired a Pixel 6, I can also say the S22+ is one of the better Android flagships. It's a well-built phone with good performance.

And Samsung has come a long way with its interface — it's both less insistent on replacing Google and better when it does. I have my beefs (you swipe one way to bring up the app drawer but another to scroll through the app drawer, for instance), but I could live with that. And it's freaky to realize that Samsung will actually offer better long-term update support than Google, at least if you don't mind waiting two or three months after Google releases a major Android revision.

 

[Amused]

Well, I just upgraded my Note 10 Plus 5G 512GB with an S22 Ultra 512GB. It arrives today. LOL, the door knock just came as I was typing this. It's here!
I'm mainly upgrading for the camera, better reception and 5G compatibility. Were those not better I would have LOVED to stay with my Note 10 Plus. It's an amazing phone with the best battery life of any phone I have ever had.

 

[Amused]

 

[Amused]

 

[nOOky]

Just fired up a new 22 Ultra 512gig for the wife today. I appreciate them not putting a 45 watt charger in the box, so I can go ahead and buy one myself from Amazon. The old charger she has is USB-C to USB-A so she will need USB-C to USB-C in case she rents a car that only has USB-C like many European models do. Also kicked down that extra $200 for the additional storage, now we have a micro-sd card 512gig that she can no longer use in the new phone, maybe I'll put it in my dash camera I dunno. I look forward to her not using the S-pen, losing it, then trying to plug a laptop charger in that opening.

Other than that it is big, as big as my Note 20 Ultra but thicker. My wife has about 65 apps on her old phone, I did not copy anything over from her old phone, I'm being a butt and making her install the ones she uses from the play store. It will take her some getting used to, the S20+ she had was smaller, but I think the rounded corners make it harder to slip into a pocket. She's a small women, and wears small clothes.

Overall I was the one that transferred all of her pictures etc. and set up the phone. I really wish there was a phone with a smaller form factor that had the same camera layout, these things are getting too big. Lack of memory card slot is also annoying, I was able to take the images off her old memory card and transfer them to her computer very quickly, transferring things from a phone with just the USB-C cable takes a lot longer.

Sorry if it sounds like more of a rant than anything, I still see lack of removable storage etc. as a major negative.

 

[bigboxes]

Just fired up a new 22 Ultra 512gig for the wife today. I appreciate them not putting a 45 watt charger in the box, so I can go ahead and buy one myself from Amazon. The old charger she has is USB-C to USB-A so she will need USB-C to USB-C in case she rents a car that only has USB-C like many European models do. Also kicked down that extra $200 for the additional storage, now we have a micro-sd card 512gig that she can no longer use in the new phone, maybe I'll put it in my dash camera I dunno. I look forward to her not using the S-pen, losing it, then trying to plug a laptop charger in that opening.

Other than that it is big, as big as my Note 20 Ultra but thicker. My wife has about 65 apps on her old phone, I did not copy anything over from her old phone, I'm being a butt and making her install the ones she uses from the play store. It will take her some getting used to, the S20+ she had was smaller, but I think the rounded corners make it harder to slip into a pocket. She's a small women, and wears small clothes.

Overall I was the one that transferred all of her pictures etc. and set up the phone. I really wish there was a phone with a smaller form factor that had the same camera layout, these things are getting too big. Lack of memory card slot is also annoying, I was able to take the images off her old memory card and transfer them to her computer very quickly, transferring things from a phone with just the USB-C cable takes a lot longer.

Sorry if it sounds like more of a rant than anything, I still see lack of removable storage etc. as a major negative.

It's hard getting older.

But I agree with much of what you have to say. I've got an S20 which I love, for the most part. I got it because it was still pocketable with a minmalist case. I don't like holding up license plates to my face. It's just me. Samsung did away with the moveable storage with the S21. I love being able to stick 512GB of removable storage in my device. I got the best miniSD card they had. I store all media (pics, music and video) to that card. When I replace my phone, I just pop out the old card, copy the contents to my backup home server and put it in a SD card album for another backup). I then put a new card into the new phone. I'm not sure what I'll do after I upgrade the next time. I suppose just pay for more onboard storage.

I get that everyone has transitioned to streaming and online storage. But that is possible only when connected to data. You get used to it and when you can't connect a lot things that you take for granted stop working. Plus, most people that use these phones are part of the Google ecosystem. Just like Apple, an Android device has a mothership to connect to. It's a decision I had to make. I'm also part of that Amazon ecosystem to a degree. I use Google and now pay for data storage. My device is pretty much backed up (contacts/texts/photos/videos). I've been using fast charging since my Essential Phone. I save all my wall warts and bought some extras for travelling when I bought the S20.

 

[kingrobert]

My mind is diverting towards S22 ultra from iPhone 13 pro max, from 7 years I am an IOS user. After watching the S22 ultra's camera I got this phone fan.

 

[Tup3x]

I've had my S22 since launch and to be frank, Exynos 2200 sucks. Especially the GPU and real world performance is meh (this uses ANGLE for all OpenGL ES rendering and Vulkan performance is hardly class leading). I'll switch to S23 as soon as possible.

 

[Commodus]

I've had my S22 since launch and to be frank, Exynos 2200 sucks. Especially the GPU and real world performance is meh (this uses ANGLE for all OpenGL ES rendering and Vulkan performance is hardly class leading). I'll switch to S23 as soon as possible.

I do hope the rumors of a Snapdragon-only Galaxy S23 are true. Samsung is that Mean Girls teen who keeps trying to make fetch happen; it desperately wants everyone to use Exynos chips, but the designs just aren't good enough. I'd rather Samsung swallow its pride and exclusively use Snapdragons than make a large portion of its customers suffer.

As a side note: it's a bit surprising that Google managed to wring solid performance out of its apparently Exynos-based Tensor chip in the Pixel 6. Makes me wonder what the Pixel 7's second-gen Tensor can do.

 

[Tup3x]

There are many issue with their current approach. Samsung's modems have pretty much always been worse than Qualcomm's (signal strength, battery usage). Then there's the image processing, which is usually worse than on Snapdragon. Now they have to try to optimise for both SoCs and it's pretty obvious that it's easier for Snapdragon - their software and drivers just are better.

They just should always just pick one SoC and optimise around that. Using two totally different ones is just a waste of resources and Exynos is always the one that gets neglected (not that the hardware is good to begin with... but maybe things would be a bit better).

 

[Commodus]

There are many issue with their current approach. Samsung's modems have pretty much always been worse than Qualcomm's (signal strength, battery usage). Then there's the image processing, which is usually worse than on Snapdragon. Now they have to try to optimise for both SoCs and it's pretty obvious that it's easier for Snapdragon - their software and drivers just are better.

They just should always just pick one SoC and optimise around that. Using two totally different ones is just a waste of resources and Exynos is always the one that gets neglected (not that the hardware is good to begin with... but maybe things would be a bit better).

That's a good point... it's not like writing Windows x86 apps, where the differences between AMD and Intel are rarely significant. Samsung's approach may have prevented it from pushing features to their limits, or even including certain features. That and it probably wasn't easy to develop OS updates for two different SoC families.

The catch, of course, is any benefits of streamlining things won't really pan out until Samsung stops supporting the last Exynos-based models. But the company has to start somewhere.

 

[kingrobert]

Finally, I have purchased an S22 ultra and it is an awesome set. The 100x zoom of its camera is awesome.