The Pen is on the left side of the S22 Ultra as well. From my understanding that was done to get it as far away from the UWB antenna as possible due to potential interference.
and FWIW I really like my s22 Ultra. It’s by far the best work phone I’ve ever had and the latest s-pen is noticeably more responsive than the Note 10 version. Not to mention that the displays is among the very best ever put in a smartphone.
And @dstrauss is right about not getting the full rebate unless you pay for it over three years, but OTOH since you are still using the Note 10, you aren’t likely to be trading it in where the loss of the rebate would be an issue. Plus you get a LOT faster phone and for the moment anyway (we have completed testing of the radios on the new S23 Ultra with the remaining tests still to come) the S23 Ultra is the fastest/best 5G available.
Engadget review is up and they further confirm what I suspected which is it’s really more the software that’s holding Samsung from being the top smartphone camera…
And they notably lag behind Apple in hi res video regardless…
PS: semi related, but we just found out that there will be a day one software update for the S23 line. Which is good because we’ve found a few odd bugs in OneUI on the sample we have such as touching the weather icon brings up the app drawer most of the time.
PPS: please don’t misconstrue my statements on the cameras, they are excellent across the board and in aggregate are IMHO equal to the ones in the iPhone 14 pro and Pixel Pro 7. I am truly picking nits
That is impressive but it’s more down to Samsungs superior image stabilization algorithms which has almost always been the case that Samsung has been superior in that regard versus a tangible benefit of the 200 MP sensor.
Ik not saying this is the case here, but wasn’t there a vendor in the past few years that basically reimagined moon pictures based on stock images? Now that’s what I call computational photography.
Edit: rumors about Huawei in 2019, Samsung in 2021. Doesn’t seem like it was ever proven though.
See that’s what going to make these discussions both confusing and complicated. Those shots you mention were obviously highly modified with Photoshop.
But there’s a strong argument to be made that computational photography of which Apple and Google are big champions of is just automated before the fact versions of the same thing.
I haven’t made up my mind on multiple aspects of this yet. On the one hand, I appreciate that it’s getting easier than ever to get “good” photos without much effort on my part. On the other hand, more and more the shots I see from all of the top smartphones have to my eyes an obviously “processed” quality to them.
eg. the early test shots we’ve taken with the S23 Ultra are extremely vibrant in color…but not necessarily truly reflective of the subject matter. And “exuberant” color has long been a trait of Samsung’s smartphones.
Well, color defaults can be changed in the settings.
What I’ve found curious is the disparity in what is “realistic”. Is it what the technology allows through the camera or is it what we see with our own eyes (and brain processing)? The former has never come close to catching what I truly see (rainbows; bright & dark mixed spaces—dynamic range).
Yet post processing and now in-camera processing (computational photography), which attempt to get the end product closer to what we see, is so often decried as “unrealistic” because it isn’t what the camera itself recorded. :vb-scratch:
Humans are weird. It’s like the food critics and their pickiness about “authenticity”.
So to be clear, as part of the tests we do, we don’t use the “default” settings but ask the manufactures for the settings that are most neutral or faithful to the luminance and RGB values of the scene. In addition, those shots are of things like a Macbeth Color Checker and an 18% gray card. And that’s the variance I’m speaking of here.
In other words in the case of the S23 ultra shots of the Macbeth chart dark reds and dark blues were measurably significantly oversaturated.
OTOH many people subjectively rate pictures where that’s the case as superior and for that matter Samsung’s generally oversaturated color presentation with their smartphone and tablet displays.(though yes you can turn it off, but I think most would be surprised how few actually do).
And I’ll admit my own bias right up front, likely due to my years working with displays, I value accuracy quite highly.
My mistake then. I thought they had a natural setting that was decently accurate just as they have the “natural” setting for the display colors (which I always set as one of my first actions on any smartphone).
Samsung does as does Google, however that’s not what either suggests for accurate…
And BTW I’m not picking on Samsung, it’s just what we are testing at the moment. Apple tends to exaggerate the color values of “pastel” shades such as light pink, yellow and green. No doubt based on their analysis of the hundreds of millions of customer iCloud photos.
And Apple goes “all in” on HDR even on so called “raw” images.
Google FWIW seems to go for a middle ground between Samsung and Apple though they seem to be especially fond of certain types of sharpening effects.
EDIT: specific to Samsung, the “natural” setting tends to slightly under saturate generally and also reduces overall contrast somewhat. In this case I think the “natural” they are going for looks like what people were used to getting from Kodacolor film prints back in the day
I don’t know about how all of this works, but I do know I cannot take any shot like that with an iPhone 13 Pro - all you ever get is a blown out white disk.
My own efforts have been hit and miss with a few great shots and some as you describe. I suspect it’s down to if the AI aspect of computational photography detects if its a moon shot and activates versus just a brighter light blob.
I like him generally especially when he talks about Apple tech. But watching this proves to me how subjective (versus objective) most reviews are today.
Again don’t get me wrong, the cameras in the 23 Ultra are certainly the best ones yet from Samsung, but they are simply not the slam dunk champion that advocates would like them to be.
IMHO. based on everything I’ve seen so far, they in aggregate pull Samsung once again even with the Pixel 7 Pro and the iPhone Pro 14 with each of the three having strengths and weaknesses.
And I agree with a lot of reviewers that at least with the default settings (which I’ve seen estimates that less than 5% of users of smartphone users generally, bother to change), Samsung’s photos look “over processed” with too vivid color and exaggerated contrast with those default settings.
And FWIW with my S22 Ultra I use Samsung’s “expert raw” option which produces more accurate/neutral results.
And again, like I’ve said before user preference is absolutely valid in this context and Samsung has concluded that the possibly the majority of their users prefer “punched up” color and contrast as the default settings in both their smartphone displays and photo output.
