I feel your pain. The best thing about the siloed pen is that it’s always there. I have no problem using the little stick pen for note taking.
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Verge has their review up & they seem to really like it. Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review - The Verge
Yeah quick take from us is that it’s a solid phone. I don’t think I’d bother if I had a s21 Ultra, but I’d consider it from a Note 20 mainly for the new MUCH better 5g modem and improved latency on the pen.
There are some battery life issues at the moment, but that will get fixed by a patch in few weeks
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I wouldn’t go quite as far as to call this a direct competitor to the S22 Ultra but more as possibly lower cost alternative.
We are supposed to get a look at one of these next week via one of our Chinese business customers.
The two virtues I see off the bat is a pretty much bog standard load out of Android versus what many feel is the heavy handed changes that Samsung provides via One UI
And a broader choice of pen options (MPP we hear)
OTOH of course the Note adherents will say, “no silo, no sale!” but…
Motorola’s new $999 Edge Plus gains stylus support, competes with Samsung’s S22 Ultra | ZDNet
PS: Our customer said that in hands on they got it was a very fast phone
BTW: has anyone here ordered or is planning on buying one of these?
PS: For the moment anyway, Samsung has taken back the smartphone camera crown IMHO…Until of course the iPhone 14 comes out 
What pen tech does the Moto used? Also, I thought Lenovo moved Moto devices to a more Lenovo type skin?
MPP we think
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While that is basically true, the moto phone is really close to the Note in price. So, why not just get the OG? Plus, there are some great deals on the Samsung.
Agreed though we hear that the Moto when it actually hits the carriers there will also be solid deals, well under $1000
My point was, at least in our customer base, a surprising number that just can’t abide Samsung regardless. Seem silly to me but…
Plus, especially with this latest gen, the new Pen is hands down the best going, nothing else comes close IMHO
Don’t you mean “So why not just get the real thing?”
So this is a bad look for Samsung. It’s accurate as near as we can tell as we’ve been able to replicate it as well including with one of our own custom apps.
I can’t help but think this is yet another abuse of benchmarks. e.g. I think someone at Samsung saw that a lot of the “reviewers” out there run some of the gaming-oriented benchmark apps to decide if a phone is “fast” or not and this is a way to artificially “game it”.
What’s sad is that it’s IMHO an effort with no long term upsides. One, the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 is a fast chip and is a significant jump over the previous gen chip.
Two, this will make the very people they are trying to win over all the more skeptical/distrustful of Samsung.
I hope this is not what it seems, and a better explanation is forthcoming.
Is Samsung the latest Android device maker throttling apps? - The Verge
PS: This does put the alleged throttling on the new OnePlus 10 in a different light as well and part of me wonders if this possibly is thermal management gone awry.
I would have thought the purpose of a “Game Optimizing Service” was like Microsoft’s Game Mode that reduces unnecessary processes while playing a game, to improve performance. But this thing from Samsung throttles games and other apps continuously, with the exception of benchmarks? Boy are they going to get some spirited feedback!
The amount of throttle indicated by renaming a benchmark to Genshin Impact, “from 2618 to 1141”, is pretty severe, too.
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@Dellaster Yeah Ted we are still puzzling over this ourselves. If the intent was like MS game mode which was/is a good idea, alas not executed all that well, I’d be all for it.
But if that was the intent, even basic QA would have caught the way it’s working, after all it’s one of Samsung’s own apps that involved.
PS: The new Tab S8 line has this app as well and it’s throttling them too.
Well it appears that the throttling may be a good intention with a flawed execution
I’ll reserve final judgement once the alleged patch is released. In Samsung’s defense, these types of things while great in theory are often difficult in practice. MS game mode for example certainly had a bumpy start.
(2) Samsung found to be limiting the performance of its smartphones [Samsung responds] - PhoneArena
BTW: One obvious thing, to me anyway that they could do with this is make engaging it a manual toggle. I think anyone that would care about this, implicitly would know enough to manage it themselves
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Really negative review by Ars Technica of the S22 Ultra. However he just comes off mostly as a Pixel Fanboy more than anything.
That’s not to say that the Pixel 6’s aren’t good phones, they are, arguably the best yet.
Totally unbalanced IMHO
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: The slab phone retirement plan | Ars Technica
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Before clicking the link I knew it was Ron Amadeo…
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Did you mean “unbalanced” or “unhinged?”
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I’ve gone back to commenting there recently, but might stop visiting there again.
They allow too much bias to seep, nay, flood into their reviews. They seem to have a need to be negative too. And it affects pretty much all the topics they cover. The review of the Mario Kart expansion was just looking for issues. Even their own readers took issue with the author.
And there seems to be backlash against this review too. I also noticed how many of the comments supporting it are actually using it to air their personal grievances in long tirades (I’m one to talk…).
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This quote is a*inine.
"The inclusion of an S-Pen is a big tradeoff since the stowable pen takes up a ton of room in the phone that would otherwise be used for the battery. Past Samsung phones have traded 500 mAh of battery capacity for the S-Pen. Thanks to density improvement, Samsung has managed to keep the total battery capacity of the Ultra line stable this year, even with the S-Pen, but there’s no hiding in teardowns that the pen takes up about 10 percent of the battery area. This wasn’t a big deal when you could pick between the Note and Galaxy S lines, but now, you’re stuck with the S-Pen and a smaller battery no matter what.
The S-Pen is the same as it has always been. It’s light and cheap feeling, like a plastic Bic pen, and it’s a far cry from the hefty metal styluses of an old PDA. The S-Pen works fine for light taps on the UI, but writing with it can be awkward. A phone is small enough that there’s nowhere to rest your hand as you write like you would on a tablet or desk. Everything just kind of hovers in the air, and I find the pen a bit painful to use. If you know how to use the pen, though, having it available at all times could be helpful. Even if the screen is off, removing the pen will launch a low-power Notes app."
Really? The pen takes up too much space? I suspect that there’s more than enough space between the author’s ears.
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Contender for 2022 post of the year!