The Samsung Galaxy S22 series was officially launched two weeks ago, and it seems like the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is the highlight of the series this year with its inclusion of the S-Pen from the Note series, its industry-leading LTPO AMOLED display, and the company’s latest and greatest camera setup yet in a smartphone. In fact, demand is so high that pre-orders now go as far back as April for customers to collect their Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.
However, before you drop over 1000 Euros(or over 1000 USD/1 lakh) on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, DxOMark just released its latest camera review of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the device only managed to score 131 points, the same as last year’s Oppo Find X3 Pro.
Let’s start with the pros. DxOMark mentions that the photos from the S22 Ultra have a pleasant white balance and colours in all conditions. The device also keeps good exposure in most scenes with its wide dynamic range. For portrait, photos out of the S22 Ultra achieve a natural simulated bokeh effect with its near-accurate corner detection.
As for zoom, the S22 Ultra was Samsung’s greatest leap in smartphone zoom photography. It was able to preserve the nice colours and exposure at all zoom settings. Video performance is as expected in the flagship segment with its fast and smooth autofocus, good video stabilisation when walking while recording, good exposure and wide dynamic range in bright light and indoor video.
As for the camera’s shortcomings, the S22 Ultra has comparatively slow autofocus for photos in many lighting conditions, one where the Oppo Find X3 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max do better than the S22 Ultra. DxOMark also pointed out that another lacklustre area of the S22 Ultra’s camera is its inconsistent sharpness between video frames when the camera is moving while recording, especially in low light.
Do take note the model tested by DxOMark is the Exynos 2200 model that is only available in Europe and the UK. So if you’re from the US, Canada, Middle East, India or other Asian regions, you will be getting the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset instead. DxOMark did reply that they will be also be testing out the Snapdragon variant of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra this year as well, and they will be publishing the review once they have received the device from overseas.
This practice also serves as a great comparison of the camera performance between the Exynos and Snapdragon variants of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. This is because although both variants share the same camera sensors front and back, both the chipsets have different ISPs which may have different imaging algorithms and computational photography software. In turn, the identical sensors churn out two different photos due to the different Exynos and Snapdragon processors under the hood.
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