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The Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G may have the best camera we’ve used on a phone

Full disclosure up front. This was originally meant to be an in-depth hands-on with the new Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G ahead of a fully fledged review next week. Said review is still in the offing, but after using the S22 Ultra for a few days, we quickly noticed a standout feature.

No, not the addition of the S Pen stylus, which we like, but rather the camera system onboard this new flagship phone.

We must admit that when Samsung dedicated so much time during its Galaxy Unpacked event for these phones solely on the camera technology, we thought it was just filler.

Much to our surprise, however, the quad camera array present here is truly impressive.

In fact, we’d argue that this is the best smartphone camera experience we have encountered to date.

Here’s why.

Let’s first state that the fact that there are four lenses at work on the rear of the phone is nothing new. Manufacturers have been throwing as many lenses as could fit on the back of phones for a few years now, Samsung included.

The crucial addition on the S22 Ultra, however, is the massive 108MP wide-angle lens. This is not the primary shooter, with a 12MP ultra-wide option taking care of that, but the addition of the 108MP lens means far more detail can be captured.

It is a boon to have when your subject matter is equally large and we can certainly see the S22 Ultra being used well to capture city scapes or grand architecture in 3:2, which is the default aspect ratio for said lens.

A word of warning though, as capturing content at this level will quickly take up storage and transferring from one device to another can be a chore, so just prepare yourself for that.

For content creators though, this could prove fantastic, especially when it comes to video. While a dedicated point and shoot or DSLR is often the more likely choice, the capabilities of the S22 Ultra will mean a very handy second option can be added to the mix. If you have a power bank too, making it your EDC for vlogging is certainly a possibility too, provided you have a solution in place for audio.

We’re also big fans of some of the smart features that have been baked into the native camera app. The eraser function for example, which facilitates fine erasing on images thanks to the S Pen, can prove quite handy.

While people might jokingly say this feature can be used to erase exes from old pictures, the real upshot here is the ability to touch up and correct images before posting online. Again, the use of the S Pen shines through here, as it adds a level of precision that your finger simply cannot muster.

A word needs to be mentioned about the display of the S22 Ultra too. The QuadHD+ resolution of 3088×1440 and 500ppi translate to a nuanced on-screen preview of images taken. It means you don’t need to look at images on a secondary device to gauge how good they are, as the display does the camera app justice.

While it can be argued that a phone that starts at R28 999 (RRP) should deliver a superb camera experience, past iterations of Ultra have felt like overkill and often did not differentiate itself from the other models in the series.

For the Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G, things definitely feel different.

We will share our thoughts in full next week with our review, but this device is shaping up as a phone that could actually live up to the Ultra moniker, instead of just being extra.

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