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Battery Battle: Here’s Who Wins Between Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S22

Technologies

Battery Battle: Here’s Who Wins Between Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S22

The newest phone from Samsung has a larger battery. We compare to see which one has the most power.

This story is part of Samsung Event, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice around Samsung’s most popular products.

My biggest complaint about last year’s Galaxy S22 was that its battery didn’t last long enough on a single charge. Samsung addressed that shortcoming with the recently launched Galaxy S23, which has a larger battery and a more efficient processor.

The Galaxy S23 doesn’t offer record-breaking battery life, but it’s enough of an improvement to make me feel comfortable using it on a busy day without carrying a charger. That’s more than I could say for the Galaxy S22, which left me with battery anxiety on long days spent away from a power outlet.

Petite Android phones like the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S22 can be hard to come by, which is why I’m glad Samsung made this fix to its 6.1-inch flagship phone.

Galaxy S23’s bigger battery makes a difference

A photo of the battery status screen on the Galaxy S23 — The Galaxy S23 has a bigger battery than its predecessor.

Lisa Eadicicco/CNET

Samsung increased the Galaxy S23’s battery capacity by 200 mAh compared to the Galaxy S22. The new phone has a 3,900-mAh battery; last year’s device had 3,700 mAh. But that’s not the only factor influencing battery life.

The Galaxy S23 family runs on a version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor that’s been optimized specifically for the Galaxy S23 series. Samsung says this new processor brings better power efficiency, contributing to the phone’s longer battery life.

Even after spending a short time with the Galaxy S23, these changes are noticeable. The Galaxy S22’s battery would sometimes dip to the 30s or 40s by roughly 9 p.m. after a long day in the office. I even had to borrow a colleague’s charger once while attending an all-day work event because I was worried I wouldn’t make it to the evening. (I typically had the always-on display turned off and the refresh rate set to standard instead of adaptive.)

My experience with the Galaxy S23 has been very different so far. I still had 64% of my battery left by 12:36 a.m. on a recent Sunday having taken the phone off its charger at 10 a.m. However, it’s important to note that I also wasn’t using my phone very frequently that afternoon. I was spending time with my family for a large chunk of the day, so I mostly kept my phone tucked away in my pocket, only retrieving it to occasionally check my texts or take a photo.

But even on a busy day, the Galaxy S23 still had more of its battery left than the Galaxy S22 likely would have. After a day of running benchmarks, taking lots of photos, recording videos and streaming YouTube videos as part of my review testing, I still had 46% of my battery left by 9:45 p.m. That’s not so bad when you consider the Galaxy S22 sometimes had 30% to 40% of its battery left by around 9 p.m. after using the phone heavily throughout the day. I also left the adaptive refresh rate setting turned on most of the time I spent with the Galaxy S23.

To further test the battery, I put each phone through a 45-minute endurance test and a three-hour battery drain test. During the 45-minute test, I continuously streamed videos on YouTube, made a video call, played mobile games and scrolled through social media feeds to see how much of a dent these everyday tasks would make in each phone’s battery. For the three-hour test, I streamed YouTube with the display brightness set to 100% and checked the battery percentage once every hour to see how much it had drained.

Unsurprisingly, the Galaxy S23 beat the Galaxy S22 in both tests, as you can see in the tables below.

Galaxy S23 vs. Galaxy S22 45-minute test

Galaxy S23	91%
Galaxy S22	89%

Galaxy S23 vs. Galaxy S22 3-hour test

	1 hour	2 hours	3 hours
Galaxy S23	95%	88%	81%
Galaxy S22	91%	81%	71%

It’s important to remember that battery life will always vary depending on how you use your device. Factors like screen brightness and the types of apps you’re using will impact battery life, so your experience may not directly mirror mine. For example, even though I sometimes struggled to get through a whole day using the Galaxy S22, I was able to preserve roughly 60 to 70% of my battery by 9 p.m. with the always-on display turned off on days mostly spent at home.

How to get the most battery life out of your Galaxy S22

Samsung Galaxy S22 — The Galaxy S22.

Lisa Eadicicco/CNET

If you own a Galaxy S22 and are struggling with battery life, there are a few steps you can take to maximize your device’s longevity. First, try turning down the screen brightness by pulling down from the top of the display to access your phone’s quick settings menu.

You’ll also want to make sure the adaptive brightness setting is disabled to prevent your phone from automatically boosting brightness when needed. While that can be a useful feature under normal circumstances, you might not want the brightness to increase when you’re trying to conserve battery life. Open your Galaxy S22’s settings menu, choose the display option and make sure the switch next to adaptive brightness is toggled off.

It’s also a good idea to try turning off the adaptive refresh rate and always-on display settings if you’re trying to extend battery life, which you can toggle in the settings menu.

Samsung devices have a power savings mode that disables certain settings to make the battery last longer. Open the settings menu, select the battery and device care option and then tap battery to access it. From this battery menu, you can also limit battery usage for apps that you don’t use very often.

These tips will work on the Galaxy S23 too, which also has a light performance mode to prioritize battery life and cooling efficiency over high performance. To turn this on, open the Galaxy S23’s settings menu, tap battery and device care, and select battery. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and choose the more battery settings option. From there, you should see a field called performance profile, which you can tap to switch between standard and light. (During my time with the Galaxy S23, I had it set to standard.)

If that’s not enough, you can try purchasing a portable charger or power bank to power up your device on the go.

With its new $700 price, the Galaxy S22 is a tempting choice alongside the $800 Galaxy S23. Just remember you’ll be sacrificing some battery life to save that money.

Technologies

Samsung S26 Ultra’s Privacy Display Makes Shoulder Surfing a Thing of the Past

You can scroll on the subway in peace.

Picture this: You’re wedged into the middle seat while cruising at 38,000 feet, half watching the clouds and half scrolling through messages you probably should have answered already. The cabin lights are dimmed. The stranger rubbing shoulders next to you adjusts in their seat. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice their gaze flicker toward your screen.

That is a moment when the new Samsung S26 Ultra’s Privacy Display, announced during the company’s Galaxy Unpacked 2026, can quietly step in.

Unlike old-fashioned screen protectors that darken your display permanently, the new feature is built directly into the Galaxy S26 Ultra (starting at $1,300) panel. It is not a film you stick on top; it’s a part of the hardware itself, working seamlessly with the software.

During the Unpacked event, Samsung brought out Miles Franklin from MilesAboveTech to demo the feature: to Miles, looking straight at the screen, everything remained crisp, bright and color-accurate. To anyone trying to peek from the side, like those of us watching the demo, the content fades into shadow. From this perspective, the screen might as well be off.

«It’s seriously one of the coolest features I’ve seen on a phone in years,» Franklin said while onstage at Unpacked.

How Privacy Display works

Under the hood, the technology relies on a combination of directional backlighting and an adaptive pixel layer that controls how light is emitted across angles. Traditional displays spread light broadly so multiple people can see the screen at once. The S26 Ultra does the opposite when privacy mode is active. It funnels light forward in a tighter beam, limiting lateral visibility without sacrificing clarity for the primary user.

Sensors play a role, too. Using the front-facing camera and ambient awareness algorithms, the device can recognize when additional faces appear within viewing range. If it senses someone hovering nearby or glancing from the side, it can automatically trigger enhanced privacy mode. You can also have the process automate when certain notifications pop up or when opening specific apps, like those for banking or social media.

Back on the plane, you can now continue typing. The stranger next to you adjusts again — perhaps curious, perhaps bored. It doesn’t matter. Your screen remains yours.

Technologies

This One Killer Feature Sets the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Apart From All Other Phones

Commentary: Samsung needed to give us a reason to be excited about its latest flagship. It delivered.

There are so many reasons not to buy a new phone in 2026. For starters, our existing phones last longer than ever if we take care of them. Plus, most new phones are way too similar, not only to each other, but to last year’s batch. Finally, most of us won’t have our heads easily turned by yet another AI sales pitch.

But on Wednesday, at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event in San Francisco, the company gave us a genuinely compelling reason to consider upgrading to its new top-end flagship, the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Its killer feature has nothing to do with AI (although Samsung is still beating that drum as loudly as every phone-maker out there).

In fact, it has nothing to do with software at all. Instead, it’s an innovation in hardware: Privacy Display, which offers pixel-level privacy that prevents anyone beside you from seeing what’s on your screen.

Privacy Display works in both portrait and landscape, with the pixels dispersing light in a way that will darken parts of the screen if you’re not looking at it straight on. You can choose whether to apply it to specific apps, to notifications or for when you’re inputting PINs or passwords. Access from Quick Settings makes it easy to turn on and off on the go, like when you suspect someone on the bus is reading over your shoulder, for example.

The reason the Privacy Display is such a compelling feature is that it’s simple to demonstrate, and it offers benefits that are easy to understand, said Ben Wood, CMO and chief analyst at CCS Insight. «Unlike a secondary-market privacy screen protector affixed to the phone’s display, it is not an ‘all or nothing’ solution,» he added.

On the surface, privacy doesn’t feel especially sexy as tech features go. But it is important to people. You only need to observe how central Apple has made privacy to its entire brand to see that people place significant value in technology they feel they can trust.

For Samsung, placing privacy front and center may be a winning strategy, giving its latest flagship a genuine edge over competitors that they can’t match simply by pushing out a software update. Privacy Display also elevates the Ultra even within Samsung’s own wide stable of phones, and it goes some way (although perhaps not all the way) toward justifying that $1,300 price tag.

«At face value, the Galaxy S26 Series devices differ little from [Samsung’s] predecessors launched just over a year ago,» Wood said. «Without this capability, the Galaxy S26 Ultra would have been an extremely tough sell.»

But Samsung may want to capitalize on this competitive advantage while it can. «I also expect this to become a benchmark feature over the next few years on all premium smartphones and other products, such as laptops,» Wood said.

That’s something to look forward to if you plan to upgrade in 2027 or beyond, but for now this is an Ultra exclusive, so you’ll need to be feeling flush if you plan to be a Privacy Display early adopter.