A compact flagship from Samsung that fits all the requirements well.
The Galaxy S22 series had a good start early this year with its three offerings including the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the Galaxy S22, and the Galaxy S22+. The Galaxy S22 Ultra (Review) has been a huge success as it offers some very good specifications like a larger AMOLED display, a premium build, and design, a powerful chipset (either Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or Exynos 2200), a massive battery with 45W fast charging, and an excellent quad camera setup.
The Galaxy S22, on the other hand, has almost all the specifications of the Galaxy S22 Ultra like a premium build and design, a good 120Hz LTPS AMOLED display for media consumption, both the same chipsets as found on the Galaxy S22 Ultra, and a triple camera setup where the main camera is 50MP and the rest we have the ultrawide and telephoto cameras.
So how good is the Galaxy S22 as a whole product and is it worth considering compared to its previous iteration Galaxy S21 (Review) which had huge success ever since its launch? Let’s find out in the full review.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Design:
The Galaxy S22 follows almost the same design as that of the Galaxy S21 with the back having a triple camera setup but now the back is more flat compared to the Galaxy S21 which was curved all around. The camera layout remains unchanged. However, there is no camera island like on the Galaxy S21 and instead, the module very much sits aligned with the back and continues with the same color as that of the back.
This back has a smooth matte glass finish which provides good grip and does not catch many fingerprints. Unlike the Galaxy S21 which had a polycarbonate back, the Galaxy S22 has a glass back that feels premium. Like the Galaxy S21, the back has an IP68 rating for protection against water and dust and also there is support for wireless charging also.
The Galaxy S21 weighs around 168grams and is easy to carry. To the sides all around, there is an aluminum frame which is called the Armor Aluminum also found on last year’s Galaxy S21 Ultra and this year’s Galaxy S22 series feels premium. Unlike the Galaxy S22 Ultra which is sharp around the corners, the Galaxy S22 has more rounded corners.
It houses the volume buttons with the power button on the right side. The left side remains cleaner and to the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot, and neither there is a 3.5mm headphone jack nor any microSD card slot for storage expansion.
The top of the smartphone has a secondary noise-canceling microphone only. On the front, there is a single punch hole that houses the selfie camera and around the sides, the bezels are very minimum. Like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the front of the display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus +. The Galaxy S22 is available in four different colors – Graphite, Cream, Sky Blue, and Violet.
Overall, the build and design feel premium like a proper flagship.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Display:
On the front, the Galaxy S22 has a slightly smaller display at 6.1-inches compared to last year’s Galaxy S21 which had a 6.2-inches display. The display has a Full HD+(1080×2340 pixels) 2X Dynamic AMOLED display and this display has an Adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. This is a similar LTPS panel as found on the last year’s Galaxy S21 Ultra (Review).
Here the display can scale from as low as 10Hz to 120Hz depending on the application running in the background. So while watching any static content like viewing images in the gallery, the refresh rate is set to 10Hz, while playing BGMI, the display switches to 60Hz, while watching a video, the refresh rate switches to 24fps, and when you are scrolling through webpages, the refresh rate switches to 120Hz.
However, still, the LTPO 2.0 AMOLED display on the Galaxy S22 Ultra is slightly better as the refresh rate scales to as low as 1Hz and this display is great for battery life optimizations. Alongside, the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a 240Hz touch sampling rate for faster touch responses during gaming and other tasks. You can also switch to the standard 60Hz refresh rate to save on battery life.
As this is an AMOLED display, the color saturation and viewing angles are great. In terms of brightness, the Galaxy S22 can reach a peak brightness of 1300nits which is good but still, the Galaxy S22+ and the Galaxy S22 Ultra can reach a peak brightness of 1750nits. The display has good visibility under direct sunlight and now with the Galaxy S22 series, there is a new feature introduced called the Vision Booster.
Vision Booster uses some data from the smartphone’s light sensor to get the ambient light from the surroundings and then it does pixel tone mapping to get better contrast and picture quality on the display. The display can be calibrated to two color modes – Natural and Vivid where Natural covers the sRGB and the Vivid covers the DCI-P3 gamut and for punchier color, you can go for Vivid.
There is support for Widevine L1 so streaming HDR content on OTT platforms is a breeze and also there is support for HDR10 on Youtube. Like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, there is an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner that works very fast and is accurate. Overall, this is a great display for media consumption.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Performance:
Like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the Galaxy S22 is either powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or Exynos 2200 chipset depending on which region you are located in and here in India we do get the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. So the performance feels top-notch as the smartphone can easily handle all the tasks without breaking a sweat whether it is playing games, multitasking between applications, etc.
Some heavy games like Call Of Duty Mobile, BGMI, etc. ran smoothly without any stutters or lags and could achieve Ultra frame rate with HDR graphics. After a long time like around 3-4 hours, the back does feel slightly warmer but Samsung has provided a dedicated liquid cooling system to dissipate heat faster. You get good carrier aggregation and there is support for 12 bands of 5G.
The Galaxy S22 like the Galaxy S21 is also available in two variants – 8GB/12GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128/256GB UFS 3.1 storage. There is a RAM Plus feature present using which you can get an extra 2GB to 8GB RAM for enhanced multi-tasking.
In terms of benchmarks, the Galaxy S22 scores very well. In terms of CPU throttling, there is some amount of throttling present but it is better controlled on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 variant compared to the Exynos 2200 variant as we saw a similar case with the Galaxy S22 Ultra. So the performance remains first class.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Software:
Like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the Galaxy S22 also runs on OneUI 4.1 based on Android 12 out of the box. OneUI 4.1 brings some new features like customization for widgets, and improved privacy dashboard with different controls and permissions for various applications, Color Palletes, and some more. There are a lot of customizations present from changes in icon shape and size, different wallpapers, different styles for the Always-On display, etc.
Talking about Color Palletes, here basically the system picks a certain color based on the wallpaper and this color is used as a theme for dialler, quick toggles, and different applications which was introduced with Android 12. The Settings menu is now having a new feature called Privacy Dashboard where you can see which apps are using the camera and the microphone.
There is also a Game Launcher dedicated to games also. In the gallery app, there is a new feature introduced called the Object Eraser was in during editing an image, if you make a selection on a particular object in an image, it gets removed from there which is called smart delete also. Like all The software experience feels good and with the display set to 120Hz, everything feels smooth.
However, there is a considerable amount of bloatware present in the form of third-party applications from Samsung and Microsoft which are useful but certain other applications do throw in a lot of notifications which takes away the premium experience. In terms of software updates, the Galaxy S22 is also slated to get four years of AndroidOS updates and five years of security patches.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Cameras:
The Galaxy S22 like the Galaxy S21 has a triple camera setup that consists of a 50MP f/1.8 main camera, a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide camera, and a 10MP f/2.4 telephoto camera. On the front, there is a 10MP f/2.2 camera. The cameras seem to be an upgrade this year over last year’s Galaxy S21.
The images from the main camera save in 12MP by default and come out with excellent dynamic range and color saturation is close to natural without any oversharpening. The noise is very less but the level of details looks sharper also. The images taken in HDR mode come out slightly oversaturated but if you choose to take images at 50MP resolution, then there is some amount of cropping done to prevent noise and details look much better.
During the night, the images come out with an excellent amount of details in shadows and also exposure is well handled without any oversharpening but there is quite an amount of noise present. The dynamic range and contrast are good though. With the night mode turned on, the noise gets reduced, exposure improves and the dynamic range improves slightly.
The 12MP ultrawide camera remains unchanged from the Galaxy S21 and the level of details comes out sharper and you get a good dynamic range also. There is some amount of noise present around the edges and since this camera has a 120-degree field of view, the field of view is wider. There is some amount of noise present though but color saturation is close to natural.
At night, the ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range and the level of details looks good but there is a considerable amount of noise present. Turning on the dedicated night mode does improve the exposure and also the dynamic range. The highlights in the shadows are restored.
The 10MP telephoto camera comes with 3x optical zoom and the images come out with an excellent amount of details and the dynamic range with contrast is very good. The color saturation is close to natural same as that of the main camera. You can also achieve 30x digital zoom but at this resolution, the details look soft, noise is slightly higher but at 5x,10x zoom, the images come out with good details and dynamic range.
At night, the telephoto camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range and the details look sharper with very less noise present in the background. Turning on the dedicated night mode does improve the exposure and also removes the noise present in the background also.
In terms of portraits, the main camera, as well as the telephoto camera, do a very good job both in terms of dynamic range. The level of details looks sharper on the main camera but edge detection is good on both cameras. The background blur is also implemented well on both cameras. The skin tones look natural slightly on the main camera whereas there is some oversaturation on the telephoto camera.
On the front, the selfies come out with good dynamic range and the skin tones also look natural. The dynamic range is great and when you zoom into the selfies, the details look sharper. The portrait selfies come out with good edge detection and there is no such oversharpening in the background. The dynamic range is also good for portrait selfies.
The videos from the main camera come out at 8K at 24fps and the videos have excellent dynamic range and the level of details look sharper. The colors look natural in the videos and switching to 4K videos at 60fps, the videos look much better without any noise and the presence of OIS, helps in noise reduction also the dynamic range is very good at night.
The 12MP ultrawide camera also records 4K videos at 60fps with good dynamic range and contrast. However, there is some amount of noise present around the edges but the level of details looks sharper. During the night, the videos from the ultrawide camera come out with good details but with the night mode turned on, the videos have much better dynamic range and no noise is present.
The 10MP telephoto camera can also record 4K videos at 60fps which results in excellent dynamic range and the details also look sharper. Since there is OIS, the noise is also very low, and similar is the case during the night, when you zoom around 10x or more, the details look good but at 30x zoom, the videos come out very blurry and there is a lot of noise present.
The front camera can record 4K videos at 60fps and here the level of details looks sharper with excellent contrast and dynamic range. The noise is very less and the skin tones look natural without any oversharpening. The portrait selfie videos come out with good edge detection and have proper background blur too. Similar is the case with the portrait videos taken from the rear cameras.
Overall, the cameras are one of the excellent on a flagship smartphone.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Battery Life:
The Galaxy S22 sports a smaller 3700mAh battery which seems to be a slight disappointment as the last year’s Galaxy S21 has a slightly larger battery capacity at 4000mAh. The Galaxy S22+ has a 4500mAh battery whereas the Galaxy S22 Ultra gets a massive 5000mAh battery. With the 3700mAh battery present, the Galaxy S22 can last a single day with heavy usage with the display set to 120Hz.
With the display set to standard 60Hz and heavy usage that includes playing games like BGMI, scrolling through webpages, rendering videos, and also streaming social media, the smartphone lasted a single day with some charge left. The standard screen on time on the Galaxy S22 is around 4-5 hours which is not very good.
With normal usage at both the 60Hz as well as the 120Hz, the Galaxy S22 easily lasted a day and a half which is very lower as both the Galaxy S22+ and the Galaxy S22 Ultra can give around two days of battery backup. In terms of charging, the Galaxy S22 is restricted to 25W fast charging whereas the Galaxy S22+ and the Galaxy S22 Ultra support 45W fast charging.
But the charger is not available in the box so you need to buy it separately. With the 25W fast charger, the Galaxy S22 can reach from 0 to 100 percent within 1 hour 30 minutes which is very time-consuming considering other flagships like the OnePlus 9 Pro that does ship with larger 65W fast chargers and charges from 0 to 100 percent within 32 minutes.
There is also support for 15W wireless charging on the Galaxy S22 which works well but is not faster as other smartphones like the OnePlus 9 Pro have support for 50W wireless charging. There is also support for reverse wireless charging which is capped at 9.5W. So on an overall basis, the battery life and the charging speeds are very average and the battery life needs to be improved.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Audio Quality:
The Galaxy S22 sports a dual stereo speaker setup that includes sound from both the top as well as the bottom speaker and the audio output feels great with proper bass levels and the loudness levels are very good without getting muffled. However, there is no 3.5mm headphone jack present and for enhanced sound output, there is Dolby Atmos present.
Verdict:
The Galaxy S22 seems to be a good compact flagship smartphone scattered to the people who want a compact smartphone with all the flagship specifications whether it is the design, display, performance, software as well as the cameras. The build and design look good and feel premium, the display is good for media consumption thanks to the LTPO AMOLED display, and the performance is flagship level.
The general performance feels good as all the tasks are handled easily and the gaming experience is very good. However, the back does heat up quite a bit also there is some thermal throttling noticed which Samsung needs to improve upon. The cameras are excellent for a flagship but still, the ultrawide camera needs some improvement.
The biggest disappointment is the battery life which could have been better as you get a very small-sized battery and there is no charger present in the box. Other than this, the charging speeds could have been better when compared to other smartphones which have slightly better-charging speeds than the Galaxy S22.
The software experience is really very good as it is feature-rich and well-optimized. Samsung is the only manufacturer which is great at delivering software updates for a longer period of time but in the user interface, there is a considerable amount of bloatware present which takes away the premium software experience. The multimedia consumption is also good as you get dual stereo speakers.
So on an overall basis, if you have a Galaxy S21, then considering the Galaxy S22 makes a good sense if you want the slightly better performance, better cameras, and a premium glass design, or else on every other aspect, the Galaxy S21 is still a worthy buy as it is slightly cheaper and provides almost all the flagship specifications.
But if you want a proper flagship smartphone with a compact design, flagship specifications, and are not concerned about battery life much and can live without the S-Pen and the larger size, then the Galaxy S22 is worth considering and definitely, Samsung has lifted up the game.