We’re putting the finishing touches on our Galaxy S23 Ultra review. But in the meantime, we know you all want to know how good the battery life is, thanks to the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. Well, we’ll tell you.
We’ll lay out the numbers here, but the review will always be a deeper dive.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra beats its predecessor’s endurance rating by 18 hours. But, arguably more importantly, the new phone also beats its predecessor in each of our screen tests – it performed 4 hours longer in web browsing and 5 hours longer in video playback. These are impressive results considering the S23 Ultra runs on the same battery capacity.
But more – the Galaxy S23 Ultra is competitive with the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max – something Samsung’s big phones haven’t been able to do in years. The Galaxy scored a higher endurance rating of 5 hours and outperformed the iPhone by a full 12 hours in our call test. But the 14 Pro Max still beats the Galaxy S23 Ultra in screen tests.
On paper, the load hasn’t improved. It’s still technically capped at 45W, although we did see an improvement in charging speed over the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Using the faster 45W Samsung adapter, the Galaxy S23 Ultra hit 68% in our 30-minute test, 8% more than its predecessor. However, both completed their 0-100% load test in 59 minutes.
Interestingly, if you use the slower 25W Samsung adapter, the Galaxy S22 Ultra was faster in both the 30-minute test and the 0-100% test.
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