My previous 2 phones were also Samsungs – a S7 edge and Note 10+, so you could say I’ve enjoyed Samsung flagships over the past half decade. My Note 10+ battery was starting to deteriorate after almost 3 years of use so I saw the S22 Ultra came in red (saw the initial promo pictures where it was a deeper crimson red) which was my favorite color so I had it pre ordered.
The custom color took a month later to ship out. However I was extremely disappointed when I opened the box. The people in charge with case colors at Samsung must be color blind because the phone was more of a copper/orange color rather than actually red.
I was expecting the similar color of the rumor pictures posted before announcement with the crimson red. Had I known this was this ugly pastel orange/copper color I would’ve just bought the phone at the local Samsung store in black where they offered $125 off with any trade in (as long as phone turned on) and saved myself a couple of bucks on top of getting it earlier.
That orange bit is so ugly and clashes with my case’s carbon/red color scheme that my OCD forced me to skin the phone in a proper red back rather than look at that ugly color for the next 2 years. Onto the phone.
The build quality is good and the screen is nice. Something you would expect from a flagship from Samsung. Speed and smoothness is negligible as I feel processing speed and memory have plateaued for someone who uses phone for communication, streaming, and social media (no gaming).
Everything was smooth but for my use, I did not notice anything different compared to my Note 10+ Onto the biggest gripe. The battery life is absolutely ATROCIOUS. The battery went from 100% to 85-90% within an hour of standby.
It was actually quite worse than my 3 year old worn Note 10+ battery which came out of the box with stellar battery life lasting a full 12h work shift with moderate-heavy use during my breaks. I went online and found a couple tips to improve the battery.
Clearing the partition cache from bootloader menu, turning off all the special screen options such as always on, double tap to wake, and all the sensing stuff to minimize battery drain when phone was in use.
I also put it on battery saver mode. With all the special screen option disabled, battery saver on, screen at only FHD and 60hz refresh rate, the battery life improved to the point where it now MATCHES my worn 3 year old Note 10+ battery life.
This is unacceptable for me as the reason I “upgraded” to the S22 Ultra was for better battery life. This will be the last time I preorder phones. Will wait for reviews from now on as there are numerous reports of poor battery life with these new flagship phones.
Will also be considering returning to Sony’s Xperia line when it comes time to upgrade. I do not see this phone even coming close to lasting 3 years like my Note 10+ as the starting battery life is already so poor.
I predict in a year and a half of wear the battery life will make this phone unusable without being plugged in 24/7. Not going to blame only Samsung on this as I’ve read the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is quite power hungry (but also read review from people with Exynos versions that had poor battery life as well).
I’m hoping Samsung will be able to optimize their software to drastically improve the battery life on this phone but I am not holding my breath for something that will even bring it remotely close to how good the Note 10+ battery was out of the box.
There are people who have reported that all of a sudden their battery life became excellent after a few days of use. I was not so lucky as it’s been almost a month with the phone constantly on and routine restarts every few days without seeing any noticeable improvements.
My previous 2 phones were also Samsungs – a S7 edge and Note 10+, so you could say I’ve enjoyed Samsung flagships over the past half decade. My Note 10+ battery was starting to deteriorate after almost 3 years of use so I saw the S22 Ultra came in red (saw the initial promo pictures where it was a deeper crimson red) which was my favorite color so I had it pre ordered.
The custom color took a month later to ship out. However I was extremely disappointed when I opened the box. The people in charge with case colors at Samsung must be color blind because the phone was more of a copper/orange color rather than actually red.
I was expecting the similar color of the rumor pictures posted before announcement with the crimson red. Had I known this was this ugly pastel orange/copper color I would’ve just bought the phone at the local Samsung store in black where they offered $125 off with any trade in (as long as phone turned on) and saved myself a couple of bucks on top of getting it earlier.
I have attached pictures of the actual color of the phone as well as the picture of my phone with a skin applied in the color that the phone SHOULD have been. (that orange bit is so ugly and clashes with my case’s carbon/red color scheme that my OCD forced me to skin the phone rather than look at that ugly color for the next 2 years) Onto the phone.
The build quality is good and the screen is nice. Something you would expect from a flagship from Samsung. I noticed an improvement on the fingerprint sensor as it was much more accurate in detecting my prints (my note 10+ was too inconsistent I ended up ditching it and used my PIN.
Speed and smoothness improvements for me is negligible as I feel processing speed and memory have plateaued in flagships from the past few years for someone who only uses their phone for communication, streaming, and social media (no gaming).
Everything was smooth but for my use, I did not notice anything different compared to my Note 10+ Onto my biggest gripe. The battery life is absolutely ATROCIOUS out of the box. The battery went from 100% to 85-90% within an hour of standby.
It was actually quite worse than my 3 year old worn Note 10+ battery which came out of the box with stellar battery life lasting a full 12h work shift with moderate-heavy use during my breaks. I went online and found a couple tips to improve the battery.
Clearing the partition cache from bootloader menu, disabling all the special screen options such as always on, double tap to wake, and all the other screen sensing stuff was reported to make a fairly significant improvement on the battery life.
I also put it on battery saver mode. With all the special screen option disabled, battery saver on, screen at only FHD and 60hz refresh rate, the battery life improved to the point where it now MATCHES my worn 3 year old Note 10+ battery life.
So the battery life improved from atrocious to fair/poor This is unacceptable for me as the reason I “upgraded” to the S22 Ultra was for better battery life. Not going put the blame solely on Samsung for this as I’ve read the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is quite a power hungry processor.
However I’ve also read reviews from people with Exynos versions that had poor battery life as well. I’m hoping Samsung will be able to optimize their software to drastically improve the battery life on this phone but I am not holding my breath for solutions that will even bring the battery life remotely close to how good the Note 10+ was out of the box.
There are people claiming their battery life became excellent all of a sudden after a few days of use. I was not so lucky as it’s been almost a month using the phone without seeing any noticeable improvements.
This will be the last time I preorder phones. Will wait for reviews from now on as there are numerous reports of poor battery life with these new flagship phones. Will also be considering returning to Sony’s Xperia line when it comes time to upgrade.
I do not see this phone even coming close to lasting 3 years like my Note 10+ as the starting battery life is already so poor. I predict in a year and a half of wear the battery life will make this phone unusable without being plugged in 24/7.
Overall this is a miss for me. It was $1600 down the drain on something that failed to satisfy the 2 primary reasons why picked the S22 Ultra in the first place – better battery life than my aging Note 10+ and have a phone in my favorite color (red).
If I had the option to refund this thing I would.