Samsung unveils new flagship S23 Ultra with massive 200MP camera

Smartphone market leader, Samsung, is equipping its latest flagship smartphone with no less than 200 megapixels of camera resolution, an improvement that it claims will deliver sharper and brighter low-light photos in the new Galaxy S23 Ultra.

The Ultra’s new internal image sensor with a resolution of 200MP practically doubles the 108MP of its predecessor, the S22 Ultra. In addition to the 200MP main shooter, the Ultra also has the familiar duo of zoom lenses and an ultrawide lens.

Among other things, increasing the camera’s resolution should improve low-light image quality by shrinking the 16 pixels into a larger one, a technique used by other manufacturers to provide better photos.

While Samsung isn’t the first to use this approach to capture more light, no manufacturer has tried shrinking the 16 pixels. Thanks to the new sensor, the resolution of an image in Expert RAW mode has increased from 12 MP to 50 MP.

All in all, Samsung isn’t changing much on the S family, and there are the usual medium, plus and Ultra models.

The Ultra returns with a large screen and 6.8-inch styles, while those who don’t need the 200MP camera will find the S23 and S23+ models more affordable with their triple-lens combination.

As with the S22, non-Ultra S23 phones have more rounded corners to the Ultra’s more angular bezel. The display diagonals of 6.1 and 6.6 inches are also more suitable for smaller hands than the Ultra’s 6.8 inches.

The S23 Ultra also retains its built-in S Pen stylus, which it inherited from the discontinued Galaxy Note series.

Perhaps the biggest design change, however, is that Samsung managed to remove the camera bump from the two cheaper models. The rings surrounding the lenses are now flush with the back of the devices.

Inside, the S23 series is now powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor instead of the in-house developed Exynos chip system in the previous generation.

Buyers in the US won’t notice this difference, but for those in Europe and other markets where Samsung has used its own chips instead of Snapdragon, there may be a performance boost. Samsung claims that the Qualcomm chip has been specially adapted for Samsung with a higher clock speed.

Samsung has changed little in terms of memory size, and the cheapest version (the S23 with 128GB of memory) starts at €949 in Europe. With 256 GB it costs €1,009. However, there is no longer a 128GB variant for the S23+ and Ultra.

Pricing for the S23+ starts at €1,199 for 256GB of storage and for the Ultra at €1,399. As before, the top version of the Ultra with 1TB of storage can only be purchased directly from Samsung and costs €1,819.

In addition to the S23 series, Samsung has also unveiled several new notebooks and is lending the “Ultra” badge to its new flagship Galaxy Book3. Prices range from €769 for the cheapest Book3 with a 15-inch screen to €3,699 for the Ultra version with a 16-inch screen and 32GB of RAM.