Phones S23 Ultra Still Good?

[Ctrlos]

Currently on the iPhone Air which I adore, but I still can’t shake the feeling of needing greater utility. I was considering a 15 Pro Max but I can get an S23 Ultra for a slightly lower price and wondered if anyone had any experience with it?

I’m well versed in Android with plenty of device history. I like the idea of a 10x lens, would find use for the S-Pen and quite liked Dex on my old S23.

My family is on the iOS ecosystem but I still have an iPad Pro to manage all that.

What’s OneUI like these days? Do you still need to tweak things to death to get it to do what you want? I’m of the opinion a phone should do what you want out of the box and then be open to further improvements, not require effort to do simple things like taking a decent photo.

Speaking of photography, how are the cameras? I’m not one for G-Cam ports. The default app should do the job. Is there still shutter lag?

 

[MarkX]

Currently on the iPhone Air which I adore, but I still can’t shake the feeling of needing greater utility. I was considering a 15 Pro Max but I can get an S23 Ultra for a slightly lower price and wondered if anyone had any experience with it?

I’m well versed in Android with plenty of device history. I like the idea of a 10x lens, would find use for the S-Pen and quite liked Dex on my old S23.

My family is on the iOS ecosystem but I still have an iPad Pro to manage all that.

What’s OneUI like these days? Do you still need to tweak things to death to get it to do what you want? I’m of the opinion a phone should do what you want out of the box and then be open to further improvements, not require effort to do simple things like taking a decent photo.

Speaking of photography, how are the cameras? I’m not one for G-Cam ports. The default app should do the job. Is there still shutter lag?

Are you keeping the Air?

 

[danb1979]

Currently on the iPhone Air which I adore, but I still can’t shake the feeling of needing greater utility. I was considering a 15 Pro Max but I can get an S23 Ultra for a slightly lower price and wondered if anyone had any experience with it?

I’m well versed in Android with plenty of device history. I like the idea of a 10x lens, would find use for the S-Pen and quite liked Dex on my old S23.

My family is on the iOS ecosystem but I still have an iPad Pro to manage all that.

What’s OneUI like these days? Do you still need to tweak things to death to get it to do what you want? I’m of the opinion a phone should do what you want out of the box and then be open to further improvements, not require effort to do simple things like taking a decent photo.

Speaking of photography, how are the cameras? I’m not one for G-Cam ports. The default app should do the job. Is there still shutter lag?

Personally I'd go for the S24 Ultra if you can. It's a much nicer phone in the hand. But look out for S25U deals too

And you can customise it to your hearts content now with GoodLock etc

 

[robvalentine]

I have a galaxy tab S9 + which has the same chip and similar internals. It's still fast for me. Updates are slower than for the latest one but its fine. My old s23 was good but the camera was lacking imo (my dogs came out blurry a lot as it has a slow default shutter speed)

 

[Ctrlos]

Personally I'd go for the S24 Ultra if you can. It's a much nicer phone in the hand. But look out for S25U deals too

And you can customise it to your hearts content now with GoodLock etc

I only ever saw the 24 as a spec bump and the 25 as a turning the unique Ultra design into something more generic. It’s things like Goodlock that seem great on the surface but kind of piss me off because you almost have to tweak it to make it useful.

 

[MarkX]

I only ever saw the 24 as a spec bump and the 25 as a turning the unique Ultra design into something more generic. It’s things like Goodlock that seem great on the surface but kind of piss me off because you almost have to tweak it to make it useful.

Every single smartphone released in the last few years has just been a 'Spec bump', that's just the way it is, smartphones have matured to a point that yearly releases aren't needed imo!

Upgrading every year citing camera upgrade as the reason to do so is nonsense. I say that as someone who upgrades every year to the latest and greatest, in my defence not for the camera though .

 

[yui4]

Every single smartphone released in the last few years has just been a 'Spec bump', that's just the way it is, smartphones have matured to a point that yearly releases aren't needed imo!

Upgrading every year citing camera upgrade as the reason to do so is nonsense. I say that as someone who upgrades every year to the latest and greatest, in my defence not for the camera though .

I stopped justifying my yearly upgrades a while back.

Reality is phones could last for years now but where’s the fun in that🤪

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Personally I'd go for the S24 Ultra if you can. It's a much nicer phone in the hand. But look out for S25U deals too

And you can customise it to your hearts content now with GoodLock etc

I don't know why I didn't jump on the S25U Christmas sale but IIRC, it was around $500-600 off MSRP. Samsung, Amazon and Best Buy all had the sale going at the same time. I should've jumped on it.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I don't know what you people think about Samsung's version of the iPhone Air but Amazon has shaved $300 off on the S25 Edge? Currently $799

 

[Chidoro]

Every single smartphone released in the last few years has just been a 'Spec bump', that's just the way it is, smartphones have matured to a point that yearly releases aren't needed imo!

Upgrading every year citing camera upgrade as the reason to do so is nonsense. I say that as someone who upgrades every year to the latest and greatest, in my defence not for the camera though .

Yearly releases are needed.
Updating yearly is not. Huge distinction

 

[MarkX]

Yearly releases are needed.
Updating yearly is not. Huge distinction

Needed how?

 

[Andrew Brown]

Dude, I have an S23, and it works fine for me. However, I don't have an ultra, but my cousin has an S22 ultr, and I have played some heavy-duty games on it; it works smoothly. So I guess S23 would be fine as well.

 

[Ctrlos]

Needed how?

Most users upgrade every 3 years. Its why annual updates are incremental: after 3-4 years they've snowballed into something significant.

But not everyone is on the same 3-year cycle. If you just came out of a 3 year contract and your choice was a 3-year old iPhone on the verge of an update (which an average consumer would know nothing about) or a recently released Samsung with all the bells and whistles you might not stick with Apple.

Upgrading annually is a fools game because you will inevitably question why you bothered. But when Apple et al show off their iPhone 18 Pro they're selling it to people still on a 14 or 15 looking for something new.