With the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 foldables now official, the leak world is focused on Samsung’s Galaxy S23 series flagships. The high-end Galaxy S23 Ultra unsurprisingly attracts more attention than its less powerful siblings. However, if the first rumors are confirmed, it could be one of the smallest upgrades in the Korean company’s flagship history, at least in terms of hardware. According to the noted leaker ice universethe Galaxy S23 Ultra will be identical to the Galaxy S22 Ultra in dimension.
The source claims a dimension of 163.4×78.1×8.9mm for the upcoming phone. The current Ultra measures 163.3×77.9×8.9mm. With no change in dimension, it’s no surprise that the phone also sports an identical display. We get a 6.8-inch AMOLED panel with a resolution of 1440 x 3088 pixels. Samsung offered a maximum screen brightness of 1750 nits on this year’s model. We’ll have to wait if the company pushes things further next year.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra will also pack a 5,000 mAh battery, unchanged from this year. Well, with the same size phone, that was expected. But that should mean that Samsung isn’t quite ready with stack-type batteries for smartphones just yet. This technology is already in use for electric vehicle (EV) batteries and allows for a 10% increase in battery capacity without increasing package size.
Earlier leaks revealed that the Galaxy S23 Ultra will also borrow most of the cameras from the current Ultra. Apart from the main sensor, the rest of the rear camera array may remain unchanged. Based on this information, it looks like the visual distinction between the Galaxy S23 Ultra and the Galaxy S22 Ultra will be difficult unless Samsung changes the rear camera layout. The current camera design is also quite sleek, so it doesn’t need much change either. We’ll have to wait for render leaks for confirmation on this.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra will still bring some notable improvements
While the Galaxy S23 Ultra may look identical to this year’s Ultra model and may even share some key components, it will still come with some noticeable improvements. The main 200MP rear camera could very well be its USP, but there will be improvements in other areas as well. Samsung will likely pair the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor with the recently announced UFS 4.0 storage solution, which should lead to faster overall performance. The Korean firm’s One UI 5 software should also bring optimizations for smoother performance.
Elsewhere, we learn that Samsung will equip the Galaxy S23 Ultra with the world’s largest ultrasonic under-display fingerprint sensor: Qualcomm’s 3D Sonic Max. It should also make fingerprint unlocking faster and smoother.
Overall, Samsung is perhaps more focused on improving performance and reliability than improving hardware. The Galaxy S22 Ultra is already a beast of a smartphone. With better hardware and software optimizations, the Galaxy S23 Ultra might still look like a big upgrade even if it doesn’t look like one on paper.