Go Your Phone Way

For the choosy smartphone buyer, 2022 is the year of options galore – from fantastical flagships to budget bangers, there’s something for everyone over the next 17 sparkling pages

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SAMSUNG GALAXY S22 ULTRA

Price from ₹1,09,999 / samsung.com/in

With smartphone competition reaching fever pitch over the last 12 months, from Apple striking hard with its iPhone 13 Pro Max to Google finally hitting its stride with the Pixel 6 Pro, Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra has a lot to prove.

While the two other S22s look like evolutions of last year’s S series, the Ultra sports a heavy curve on both sides with a flat top and bottom – just like the old Galaxy Note20 Ultra. There’s no harm in recycling a good look, but the whole package needs to be teeming with cutting-edge tech to justify the S22 Ultra’s six-figure price tag.

Stylus: speedy

The S22 Ultra is the first ‘S’ phone to have a built-in S Pen. Latency is down from 9ms to 2.8ms so it’s super-responsive, which Samsung says is because it uses AI to predict where the pen’s going to go before you actually take it there – eerie and, in practice, excellent.

Samsung’s also upgraded handwriting recognition to support 88 languages, while also bringing back all the S Pen Air Actions – so you can use the stylus as a camera shutter or a pause/play button for movies and music.

This S Pen recognises 4096 levels of pressure, making it an excellent digital art tool with its full sensitivity recognised across Clip Studio, Sketchbook and most other Android drawing apps.

Screen: shiny

The S22 Ultra’s Dynamic AMOLED screen is a hefty 6.8in. With its QHD+ resolution it’s wonderfully sharp, and the super-smooth refresh rate of 120Hz means menus and web pages scroll like melting butter sliding on a pan.