Samsung has been practicing having two separate Galaxy flagship devices launches, the Galaxy S-series that focuses on photography in the first half of the year followed by its productivity-centric, Galaxy Note-series latter of the year. Things have changed last year when the Galaxy Note-series was axed from the Galaxy line up and the Samsung Galaxy Z series has taken over the launch.

Samsung didn’t address the reason why the Galaxy Note series was discontinued until the unveiled of the new Samsung Galaxy S22 series. Looks like Samsung is trying to streamline the Galaxy Note into the S22 series. Basically, they combined the best of both worlds and the born of the new Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. Here’s my first impressions of the new Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Among the trio Samsung Galaxy S22 series, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is the odd one that has its own design language. There isn’t any rounded-off corner like its others Galaxy S-series while it’s a lot boxier just like its past Galaxy Note design. The most obvious is of course the presence of the S Pen and a slot for it. The Samsung Galaxy S22 and S22+ get a flat display whereas the Ultra has a dual-sided curve display.

It has a glass body with a matte finish that helps keep fingerprints off from the device. There are now more color options rather than the basic Phantom Black and Phantom White, the review unit that I have here is Burgundy which looks like Bronze at a certain angle and matches well with my Samsung Galaxy Buds Live. It also comes with a more unique color, Green.

The display and the rear glass are protected with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ which is currently exclusive for the Samsung Galaxy S22-series, as well as Armor Aluminium, claimed to be the strongest aluminum used in modern smartphones.

For the first time, Malaysia market gets to have the more favorable Qualcomm SoC, which is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. We also get a physical dual nanoSIM slot where we don’t need to apply eSIM to have two mobile numbers in one device. Given three storage options; 128GB, 256GB and 512GB with no microSD card slot.

Not sure why 128GB still exists when the storage could easily be filled up; worth noting the S22 Ultra is capable to take 108-megapixels images, not to mention RAW Expert photo shooting and 8K video recording. The base model gets 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM while the 256GB and 512GB coupled with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM.

The 6.8-inch LTPO 2.0 display (Adaptive refresh rate from 1Hz to 120Hz) with QHD+ resolution does look by far the best display on any smartphone that I have seen. It’s vibrant, sharp, and can go very bright which is still usable even under harsh sunlight. Feature Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner instead of the conventional optical; it’s fast and more accurate.

The S Pen is further improved which now has a much lower latency speed of 2.8ms from 9ms, making writing and scribbling more fluid.

Equipped quad-camera setup; a 108-megapixels f/1.8 aperture main camera with OIS, two separate 10-megapixels telephoto cameras with 3x and 10x optical zoom with OIS, and a 12-megapixels f/2.2 ultrawide with autofocus. The camera setup is also assisted with a laser autofocus sensor. The center hole-punch front camera is a 40-megapixels f/2.2 aperture that does autofocus. Photos and videos samples will be shared on my full review coming soon.

Although the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra has a built-in S Pen, Samsung still manage to squeeze in a 5,000 mAh battery while retaining the size and weight compared to the last year’s Galaxy S21 Ultra. It even supports faster 45W fast charging.

This is all I have now for my first impressions of the new Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. A more comprehensive review will be available soon after I have some good tests with it.

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is available now from RM 5,099 to RM 5,899. Get an instant RM 200 when you trade in your old device on top of your trade-in value upon purchase of S22 series. Additional you will get a free Samsung Watch4 (40mm) worth RM 899, Galaxy x LAMY Safari Twin Pen worth RM 269, 6-months of 100GB OneDrive cloud storage, and 30% off for Samsung Care+