Review: Can Samsung’s S23 Ultra see too much?

The best mobile phone camera in the market might capture more than you bargained for, which can be both a blessing and a curse.

Samsung's new S23 Ultra has a 200 megapixel camera.

Is there such thing as a camera that’s too good?

From afar, it looked like nothing more than a quick snap of a slightly overgrown backyard but upon better inspection, of which was about 25x zoom, it was actually a spider web about the size of a car bonnet.

The mastermind behind it all, a spider not much bigger than a 50c coin, would have been easily missed by the human eye, but not this phone.

The Samsung S23 Ultra is top of the Korean technology giant’s new range and its star factor is a 200 megapixel camera which uses AI to enhance its photography capabilities.

The camera, the best on any mobile phone by far, is so clear you’ll no longer have to get into tight crevices with a torch in one hand and a phone in the other to snap a picture of a serial number on the back of an oven or dishwasher.

Now you’ll simply be able to stand from a few metres away and zoom in.

The S23 Ultra’s camera has extraordinary zoom capabilities.

There’s a ton of new features, including increased night photography features which worked well under test.

The S23 range all include a new and improved 12 megapixel camera on the front, which means your selfies are getting a whole lot sharper and any imperfections are a lot clearer. Under test it performed well.

One of the niftier features is the phone’s ability to use Galaxy 2 Buds as a microphone to build what the company calls 360 degree sound while filming.

The new device is a costly affair, entering the market at $1949. Each of the 2023 devices – which include an S23+ ($1649) and an S23 ($1349) – arrive at exactly $100 more than their 2022 counterparts.

At the time of their launch Samsung was confident there would be no trouble with sales but Telstra’s half-year results suggest otherwise; the nation’s largest telco admitted its customers on average were hanging on to their old handsets for 36 months.

Unlike the S23 and S23+, the S23 Ultra arrives with rounded edges. It sports a 6.8-inch frame and comes in weighing 234g, about 20g more than Google’s Pixel 7 Pro and just shy of 70g heavier than the S23.

Samsung ditched the camera casing with the new model, a move which slims down the back of the device and allows it to sit easily in the pocket.

The S23 Ultra is heavier than the base model S23.

The device is nearly 70g heavier than the new baseline S23 which is a small price to pay for impressive specs.

The in-built S Pen is a nice feature and the S23 Ultra’s large size makes scribbling down notes relatively easy compared with previous models. While it doesn’t compare to an iPad, it is fun to draw from time to time.

One feature we like a lot about Samsung is a simple feature called “repair mode”. Enabling this mode will hide all of a user’s data from a technician or screen repairer working on the device.

Gone are the days when a user has to hand over a pass code to a complete stranger and trust they won’t snoop through their photo albums or text messages.

The verdict? It’s a great device – but at a price point on par with a laptop, one really would have to consider how much they value the new camera.

Originally published as Review: Can Samsung’s S23 Ultra see too much?