When the Samsung Galaxy S22 was released, alongside its two big brothers, the S22+ and S22 Ultra, it certainly got lost in the shuffle as these smaller Android phones tend to do. Most of the market is focused on larger phones, as most of thebest Android phonesall seem to have a huge screen that makes one-handed operation difficult. But being left behind (so to speak) may be the greatest strength of the Galaxy S22 today.
In retail, it’s all location, location, location, but when you’re talking about buying a new phone, that’s all about timing. Being a year older, the price of the Galaxy S22 has already started to fall, something we expect to continue in the future. When youcompare the Samsung Galaxy S22 to the Galaxy S23, you may start to see why saving $100 (or more) on a compact and powerful phone like the S22 is a good idea.
Samsung Galaxy S22
Even though it’s not the new kid on the block anymore, the Samsung Galaxy S22 offers a fantastic experience, making it a joy to have in your hands for almost any situation. It’s compact, powerful, and has many features that both power users and casual phone fans will enjoy. It’s a shame that the battery life is so noticeably lackluster and that charging the device is a bit of a drag. Outside that, however, it’s still a damn good phone that can still hang in the big leagues even though it’s not the shiniest tool in the shed.
Availability & Network
While the Galaxy S22 may not be the shiny new toy Samsung is talking about all the time — that honor belongs to theGalaxy S23 Ultra— you won’t have trouble finding it where you want it. All the major carriers in the States (and those up here in the Great White North, for that matter) still carry the device. Plus, places like Best Buy and Amazon seemed to have plenty of stock when writing this review.
If you want to find this phone, you definitely can. It launched at $800 for the starting configuration with 128GB of internal storage and 8GB of RAM, but it’s dropped to $700 at most retailers for now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it drops lower as time goes on.
While testing the device, I never experienced any hiccups with connectivity, regardless of what I was using. Wi-Fi was always solid, provided I was hooked up to a network, Bluetooth worked like a dream with various earbuds and gaming controllers, and the call quality never failed me — both on LTE and the 5G testing I managed to do one afternoon when I swapped SIM cards with a friend of mine. That mmWave 5G from my friend’s network did as promised. Crazy fast speeds on the go, but I noticed some noticeably increased battery drain when I used it — not surprising, but more on this later.
Design and display
We know that the Galaxy S23 altered the design from the Galaxy S22, but there are some small perks to having the last year’s design. You don’t have to deal with the awkward floating cameras. Instead, all three rear camera lenses are tucked away in a little module in the upper left corner of the phone. Sure, it means there’s a significant amount of wobble when you lay it on your coffee table, but it also means the cameras are a little more protected and don’t quite gather as much dust.
Ultimately, whether you like the camera bump design of the Galaxy S22 over the three individual camera islands that its successor has will be down to personal choice, but I wish Samsung kept the camera module. It gives the phone a distinctive look and protects the hardware just a smidgen more, which is a big bonus in my book.
One thing that didn’t annoy me while testing out the S22 was how slippery my hands felt, especially on a coffee table. Something about the slightly curved edges of the glass back and front display disappearing into those shiny metal sides made it feel a little loose in my hands. It wasn’t a huge problem, although I did notice that if I had precariously placed the S22 on my coffee table, it would occasionally slip off if I wasn’t too careful. To be fair, the uneven floors in my very old home certainly played their part, but I’ve had many phones in this place, and none have fallen like the S22.
The good news is that, for a phone with a premium price, it looks and feels like a premium device. Even though the Galaxy S22 is smaller than a lot of other Android phones on the market these days, it still has the right amount of heft you want from a solid device. Plus, as my uneven floors can attest, it’s pretty durable. Despite those falls, my S22 looks no worse for wear. Good to know that Gorilla Glass Victus+ doesn’t just talk the talk but walks the walk. That doesn’t mean I would suggest most people walk around with their phone bare; plenty ofgreat Galaxy S22 caseswill ensure you don’t need to rely on the Gorilla Glass, but it’s nice to know it’s well-built.
Hard not to fall in love with the display
Boy, does Samsung know how to make a phenomenal display. This 6.1-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED panel is downright gorgeous. The colors are bold, the contrast is impeccable, and those black levels are deeper than the ocean. This is nothing new for Samsung flagship phones, and as tech enthusiasts, it’s almost easy to get desensitized just to how great a feature can be if we expect it on every phone, but the display is just so good, it deserves praise every time.
Of course, a lot of the display’s good looks come from the adaptable refresh rate, which cycles in a range of 48Hz - 120Hz. It made gaming look awesome, and scrolling through documents or social media posts seemed so fluid and sharp. It’s not as efficient as the 1Hz - 210Hz range we’ve seen on the Ultra version of the Galaxy S-series phones, so this brilliant and fantastic screen is likely partly to blame for the battery woes I experienced. Still, you can’t really take the points off for having a screen this nice; it just makes viewing any content, playing around in your favorite apps, or even just swiping around One UI 5.1 such a delight.
Software and performance
While the S22 launched with One UI 4.1 based on Android 12, the new and improved One UI 5.1 (built atop Android 13) is already available on the Galaxy S22. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time with various budget Android phones and many different iPhones,Samsung One UI 5.1is relatively straightforward to use and grasp on the surface but can be deep and very robust if you start digging through settings.
Samsung seems to take the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to its Android phone software, offering so many options that the settings menu can feel a little daunting to newcomers. Still, if you want a more basic experience, you may ignore many of the bells and whistles. The camera app will work just fine even if you never touch the Pro camera, and maybe you don’t care about what folder your screenshots end up in as long as you can see them in your camera roll. Love or hate One UI, that’s your prerogative, but you can’t deny that the software really does provide something for everyone — tinkerers, tinker away!
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is no doubt still a powerhouse chipset — nothing I threw at it slowed it down one bit. Using multiple apps that are resource intensive at the same time? No problem. Playing the latest mobile games? No stuttering. It’s the type of power that people who tend to do everything on their phones will appreciate. All that speed does come with a price, though; the phone gets pretty hot during extended periods of heavy use. During a rather intense gaming session that lasts a couple of hours, you’ll be able to feel the heat, and it’s honestly a tad unsettling.
Unfortunately, that’s mostly due to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 just not being as efficient as it could be. By all accounts, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 on the S23 lineup seems to have corrected the thermals issue seen on the S22. Heat aside, I never saw the phone stutter or show any signs of being anything but buttery smooth, and that makes it more than good enough for daily use.
Battery and charging
Far and away, my biggest gripe with the Galaxy S22 is the battery life. It’s a small phone, which means a very modest 3,700mAh battery is inside, but it still can struggle to make it to the end of my day with moderate use. The inefficiency of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and the small battery capacity work together to cause a lot of charging anxiety. On days where I gamed pretty heavily for a couple of hours or used 5G quite a bit, the battery life really took a nosedive. One day I made it to as low as five hours of screen time, which is not enough for a premium phone.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. On days when my phone activity was lighter, the standby power performance was pretty good. So, it really does depend on how you use your phone, but on a phone that’s supposed to satisfy those high-end performance needs, there’s no doubt the battery is middling. It gets worse when you go to charge up.
I won’t beat around the bush: the max 25W wired charging is slow compared to the competition. Yes, the Galaxy S22+ andGalaxy S22 Ultrahave better charging rates, and yes, including slower charging speeds on the S22 probably helps keep costs down, but it feels terrible. Going from 0-100% shouldn’t take over an hour on any phone targeting the high-end market. Oddly, it’s the one place Samsung doesn’t seem to want to be ahead of the back, happy just letting companies like Oppo/OnePlus take the reigns. They didn’t change the charging speeds on the new S23, so maybe the S24 will finally be a breakthrough? One can only hope.
After well over a year with the S22 series, the capabilities of this camera system are well known. The Samsung Galaxy S22 has the same camera system as the Samsung Galaxy S22+, so definitely check out ourSamsung Galaxy S22+review for even more sample photography and in-depth analysis. That said, all told, the camera system is pretty good. If you’re a casual photo taker or take phone photographs a little more seriously, I think you’ll find a lot to be happy about.
The main 50MP f1.8 sensor is very trustworthy as a point-and-shoot camera, and I’m almost always happy with the result I got from the main sensor. You can nitpick on details and compare the S22 to other phones to debate which camera produces colors that are “truer to life,” but at the end of the day, the primary sensor on the S22 will be reliable.
The additional lenses struggle a little more with some weird lighting conditions. The portrait mode photos I took of my cat felt oddly sharpened when the decent lightning was on her face, and the 3x telephoto lens definitely would wash some photos out when the light wasn’t perfect. To be fair, the results were never absolutely terrible by any means. Heck, with some editing, they could look great, but these are the little details you might notice when you look really close at your photo from the S22.
The 10MP selfie camera has certainly been improved over the previous iteration since you no longer have that weird face-smoothing Samsung used to do, and you’ll look pretty great on video calls too! This is a huge bonus for someone who works remotely like me or loves to voice chat with friends and family.
Competition
Arguably, the flagship smartphone market is the most competitive, and the Galaxy S22 has plenty of competition. Still, the biggest rivals are theGoogle Pixel 7and its very own replacement, theGalaxy S23.
While the standard Google Pixel 7 does leave out some premium features that the Samsung S22 has access to, like a 120Hz refresh on the screen and the raw power of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, it’s hard not to fall in love with the Pixel’s software and very impressive camera. Better night photography is a big boon to anyone who loves snapping as many photos as they can during golden hour. Plus, those excellent calling features like Call Screening are absolutely game changers — more companies need to copy Google. For about $100 cheaper than the S22, the Pixel gives the Galaxy a run for its money.
The big rival to the S22 comes from Samsung itself — the Galaxy S23. It’s not really all that different from the S22, but it has a much better battery life than the S22, and that’s arguably the phone’s biggest drawback. The Galaxy S23 doesn’t charge faster, and even though the Snapdragon chip has a “2” slapped on the end of it, the biggest improvements come from efficiency and better cooling, not raw power. Still, for only $100 more, it does offer an improved experience.
Should you buy it?
If subpar battery life doesn’t scare you, it’s a no-brainer purchase. As it stands, the Galaxy S23 doesn’t offer many additional benefits over the S22 aside from a boost in screen-on time. With the S22 still being supported for a couple more years and phones already so expensive, why not save a little money and buy last year’s flagship? You’ll save at least $100 compared to the S23 and could save even more with carrier trade-in deals.
If you’re an absolute power user or phone addict, perhaps the battery life issues are a no-go for you — understandably so. Otherwise, most average users should consider sticking with this older model, especially for those looking for a compact and capable smartphone. In a world dominated by super large phones with super large price tags to match, it’s nice to have a smaller option that really does have a lot to offer, even if you have to put up with just a couple of pain points.
