Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

7owners with an opinion

71%of verdicts positive

5/2positive/negative since 2024

2.5 yrslongest happy owner

0happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and performance.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 2.5 yearsStill going

I don't have experience with iPhones, but I assume they're pretty similar to recent non-foldable Samsung flagships. My S23U has had many falls over the past 2.5 years, been surprisingly fine. Maybe they've finally gotten good enough to survive the typical fall reliably.

Likes itOwned 2 yearsStill going

Got to say, I like the current Android versions. In the early days I flashed my Motorola Defy every second month with some cool new ROM. Always rooted and Xposed, always enabling something new. Now I run a S23 Ultra and after two years it still does everything I need. OneUI 8.0 and Android 16. For work (app de) I also have a Pixel 7a, always with the newest Android Beta. Also works well. Even the entry level phones work OK to pretty good now. My Samsung A16 5G (also for work) functions surprisingly well for 150€.

Likes it

As an Android user since the T-Mobile G1, I tried switching to an iPhone 15 Pro as my primary phone from a carrier deal as the hardware looked nice plus Android/iOS has converged so much over the years with all the same apps available on either. I was pretty used to iOS from iPads and as a backup phone so the switching costs were minimal and the better MacOS integration seemed cool. But man, the notifications are a constant thorn in my side. I have missed so many work notifications due to the lack of persistent notification indicator (other than on the lock screen), and the overall weirdness of iOS lockscreen notification panel (segmentation between "old" notifications that can be mass dismissed and "new" notifications that pile up individually-ish). I use an Apple Watch and somehow still miss Teams notifications as they come in, I'm not even sure how that happens... I'm so close to abandoning the iPhone as my main phone and going back to my S23 Ultra pretty much entirely because of notifications, it's been a disappointment...

Doesn’t like it

I have also seen this in Androids (I tested this on multiple devices - S23U, OnePlus 6,8) , whenever I completely turned off the swap , the phone after a day or two of heavy usage would sometimes hang! It felt unintuitive since these devices had lot of RAM, and they shouldn't need swap . But turning off swap has always degraded performance for me.

Likes it

If you haven't tried it, especially if your workplace allows your phone to have access to some corporate data, DeX + a good pair of AR or just integrated display glasses feels like the future. I run my S23 Ultra with a pair of XReal One's, and a folding Bluetooth keyboard (DeX let's you use your phone as a touchpad). It is really amazing in widescreen mode sitting in a coffee shop, reading through technical documents and answering work email. When I'm done, it can all fold up and fit in a (spacious) pair of cargo shorts. I think Samsung has played the long game on DeX, with an eye towards their collaborative XR glasses with Google next year. As great as XReal has been, I am eager to see a "first-party" solution.

Doesn’t like it

> a focus on "bigger" makes me sad I really want a smaller/lighter phone next time. My Galaxy S23 Ultra weighs almost 300g with the case. I recently got wrist pain and some radiating pain in my pinky and ring finger. First I thought I'm getting carpal tunnel but that is quite literally the other tunnel in the wrist. Took me a while to figure this out, but turns out holding a heavy phone in one hand, propping it up with your pinkie finger (bending the finger sideways) is not a natural way for the pinkie finger to function. Stopped holding it like that and it seems to be getting better. Got a magsafe handle for the back of the phone which should arrive soon ... Hopefully it gives me more grip.

Neutral

Historically I have never used carrier commitments and paid for phones outright but did it for the first time earlier this year with a targeted offer to get a iPhone 15 Pro from Verizon for basically a couple hundred bucks in taxes. Mostly because it felt like I was getting worst of both worlds paying for a single line Verizon post paid plan without taking advantage of any upgrade offers after my BYOD deal expired. But I'm now regretting it especially because I'm getting tired of constantly missing notifications on my iPhone being so used to persistent notification indicators on Android. Planning to use T-Mobile to buy me out of my device payment plan once I get around to 800 dollars owned on my 15 Pro because being I hate how I'm locked in to a premium plan I don't come close to making full use of. I still have an unlocked S23 Ultra I can switch back to as my main phone if I decide to.

Likes it

In typical Android fashion, this app is essentially the mathematical inverse of the iPhone version. The UI on the iOS Kino app is beautiful, crafted, and elegant. The UI on MotionCam (even after the update) is functional, brutalist, and purely an engineering driven, unstyled Android 4.4 UI elements style. But MotionCam Pro gives full control, and even a RAW mode which wouldn't be possible on iPhone. You can even do ProRes (but it doesn't work very well for long unless you have a new phone with good cooling). For the purpose I use it for (magnifying glass/telescope, using S23 Ultra), it's wonderful. But I always wished that the two worlds of Android and iOS development styles would collide for a moment....

Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it

> there's high-end android phones too, with performances in line with iphones Yes, but you have to go several years back on the iPhone side: a $300 iPhone 13 from 2021 handily outperforms a new $1k Galaxy S23 Ultra on most web benchmarks and anything else which doesn’t use every core and the GPU heavily.