Connect with us

Technologies

My First Day With the Galaxy S23 Ultra

Samsung’s latest high-end phone has a new camera that already shows promise.

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

Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra is all about the cameras. The tech giant spent a good chunk of Wednesday’s launch event flaunting how well its new cameras can capture more colorful photos and cinematic videos. Veteran movie director Ridley Scott even made an appearance in Samsung’s promotional clip.

I’ve only spent a day with the $1,200 ( 1,249, AU$1,949)Galaxy S23 Ultra so far, but some of the camera upgrades are already noticeable. Portraits taken in low light, for example, seem more vibrant and flattering.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra is one of three new phones Samsung announced, alongside the $800 ( 849, AU$1,349) Galaxy S23 and $1,000 ( 1,049, AU$1,649) Galaxy S23 Plus. The Galaxy S23 Ultra is Samsung’s first with a 200-megapixel main camera, but the company also made some significant under-the-hood changes that should improve dynamic range and video capture.

Here’s a look at what has stood out the most in my first 24 hours with Samsung’s new phone.

Galaxy S23 Ultra: Great low-light portraits

The Galaxy S23 Ultra has four cameras just like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, but the main sensor has an upgraded resolution of 200 megapixels instead of 108. There’s also a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera and two 10-megapixel telephoto lenses, one with 3x optical zoom and the other with 10x.

Behind-the-scenes upgrades to dynamic range should also result in more accuracy when capturing the light and dark areas in video recordings. But it seems like these improvements are noticeable in photography, too.

My biggest takeaway so far is the way the S23 Ultra takes flattering portraits in low light. The photo below of my colleague Claire Reilly was taken in a very dim podcast studio in CNET’s San Francisco office. It was her favorite of the bunch when compared to similar photos I took of her with the Pixel 7 Pro and Galaxy S22 Ultra.

She said the lighting and color in the S23 Ultra’s photo made her face look «radiant» and is comparable to the way she looks in CNET videos that she films on a Sony ZV-1 camera with a professional lighting setup. The Pixel 7 Pro’s photo, by comparison, made her skin tone look muddier. The sequence on her sweater also looks more colorful in the S23 Ultra’s photo than in pictures taken with the Galaxy S22 Ultra and Pixel 7 Pro. (Note: The Galaxy S23 Ultra photos below aren’t displayed at their full 200-megapixel resolution because of the large file sizes.)

The Galaxy S23 Ultra also excelled under mixed lighting and captured vibrant photos, as shown in the image below taken in CNET’s kitchen. But whether the photo is better than pictures taken on the Pixel 7 Pro or Galaxy S22 Ultra depends on your preference. For example, Claire said the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s bolder colors made the photo look less natural than the Pixel 7 Pro’s, despite the Pixel’s image having harsher contrast and more severe shadow lines in the face.

When it comes to selfies, Samsung says the phone should have better dynamic range and object segmentation. That means the camera should be smarter about separating the subject from the background, as well as distinguishing other fine elements like strands of hair. You can also access manual controls for the front camera in pro mode or take selfies with the Expert Raw app. Raw capture saves full, unretouched versions of images and should offer more flexibility when editing.

So far, I haven’t noticed a huge difference in selfie quality. In fact, I prefer the Galaxy S22 Ultra’s selfie over the S23 Ultra’s in the images below. That said, the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s selfie is much brighter than the Pixel 7 Pro’s photo. I also intentionally took this photo in challenging lighting conditions to see how it handles a mix of dim indoor lighting and natural light.

Keep in mind that these are just a few early camera examples. Our full review will have more photos and videos.

Galaxy S23 Ultra design: Just as big, and just as beautiful

The Galaxy S23 Ultra looks almost identical to the Galaxy S22 Ultra. It has the same boxy shape, which sets it apart from the regular Galaxy S23 and other Android phones. The only major aesthetic difference is its color; the Galaxy S23 lineup is available in cream, green, lavender and black, while its predecessor came in burgundy, green, white and black, in addition to a few Samsung-exclusive colors. I’ve been using the cream version so far, which looks sleek and eye-catching.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra has a 6.8-inch screen that seems just as bright and vibrant as its predecessor’s, although it’s a tad large for my taste. It’s too soon to tell how long the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s battery will last on a single charge, but my review unit dropped to roughly 90% around lunchtime after starting the day at 100%.

Overall, the Galaxy S23 Ultra seems promising, particularly for photographers and videographers, but I have to put it through more testing to know for sure. I’ll have more details on the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s camera, battery life and performance in our full review.

Technologies

Tariffs Explained: Latest on Trump’s Shifting Import Tax Plan, and What It Means

Continue Reading

Technologies

Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color

Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.

Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.

Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.

«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.

Making the case for a caseless color iPhone

I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.

My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.

Pros can be bold, too

Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).

Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.

In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.

And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.

And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.

Apple never got ahead by being beige

I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.

But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.

Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.

If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.

Continue Reading

Technologies

Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.

The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea. 

According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»

The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»

Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.

Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»

K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.

More research to do on finding life on K2-18b

The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.

«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»

Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»

The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»

As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.

«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © Verum World Media