Samsung Galaxy S22 review
Expert’s Rating
Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
The Galaxy S22 5G is a dream handset for small phone enthusiasts. Highlights include a premium compact design, excellent camera performance, 120Hz display, IP68 rating and Samsung’s One UI skin.
Best Prices Today: Samsung Galaxy S22
The Samsung Galaxy S22 is the base model in the S22 series and is very similar to the larger Galaxy S22+ but sports a smaller 6.1in display and 3700mAh battery.
The S22 is available worldwide now but is it the right phone for you?
Design & Build
The S22 doesn’t feature a revolutionary design and looks very similar to theGalaxy S21but it feels premium in the hand. It features an aluminium frame and a glass front and back featuring Corning’s most premium Gorilla Glass Victus+ protection.
The phone weighs 167g and is only about 7.6 mm thick. The build quality is excellent. The back doesn’t attract fingerprints, but the camera bump is prominent. The phone is IP68 rated which means it can stay under 1.5m of freshwater for up to 30 minutes. The unit reviewed came in the Phantom White colour but you can also get it in a range of other colourways: Phantom Black, Green, Pink Gold and Bora Purple.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
The device uses an in-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor which is extremely fast and accurate compared to regular optical fingerprint sensors found in other phones. The SIM tray is at the bottom and lets you use up to 2 nano SIM cards in Dual SIM configuration.
Overall, the design is compact, familiar and is one of the best phones you can buy in terms of build quality. The display features Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ protection and the phone does not ship with a pre-installed screen protector.
Screen & Speakers
Samsung is known for its excellent displays on flagship offerings and the S22 does not disappoint. The viewing experience is excellent and there are extensive options in the settings to configure the display to your needs including an eye comfort shield.
The phone packs a 6.1in Full HD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X Infinity-O display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The refresh rate which Samsung calls Motion smoothness can be manually configured to 60Hz or set as adaptive which automatically adjusts the screen refresh rate from 24Hz up to 120Hz.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Always-on display can be enabled for those who like to check their notifications quickly. You can tap to wake the screen and get a gist of your notifications. Dark Mode is available system wide and One UI in dark mode on this panel is a treat to use. There are minimal bezels around the display and underneath the display is a 10Mp punch-hole selfie camera.
The audio from the stereo speakers can get very loud without distortion and the S22 sounds better than the S21 for sure. One of the speakers is down-firing and located near the USB-C port while the other one is located at the top behind the earpiece.
There is no 3.5mm headphone jack which is not a surprise considering the phone’s thin profile, but you could use a USB-C adapter if you don’t plan to use wireless headphones.
Specs & Performance
The unit tested in this review features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. In Europe, Samsung ships the phone with a similar 4nm Exynos 2200 chipset.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
The Exynos version features the Xclipse 920 GPU which is a result of collaboration between Samsung and AMD. You can check out the review of the S22+ for more information about the Exynos 2200.
In terms of regular day-to-day usage, the S22 shines and there are no lag or performance hiccups so everything feels as quick as you’d expect from a flagship device.
But under continuous heavy usage, the phone starts to get moderately hot especially during gaming or while using resource-intensive applications. Under such circumstances, the performance is limited to reduce the temperature.
The S22 lacks the fancier cooling technology found on theS22 Ultrawhich helps cool the device and allows for sustained peak performance.
In terms of variants, there is another model with 256GB of storage but RAM is limited to 8GB like on the S22+.
Cameras
The main camera is a 50Mp sensor with f/1.8 aperture and images are shot at 12Mp by default via pixel binning. Photos taken in daylight or under good lighting conditions come out very well. You can toggle between 0.6x zoom which uses the 12Mp ultra-wide sensor and 3x zoom on the 10Mp telephoto sensor. There is the ability to use digital zoom up to 30x.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
The tips within the camera UI are useful for mode recommendations and shot suggestions. Low light performance is good too and the night mode is very useful although it requires a steady pair of hands for avoiding a blurry shot.
There is no macro mode, but you can use the 3x zoom with the telephoto lens as a workaround. The front-facing 10Mp camera does take good selfies and portraits in both daylight and low light although performance in low light could be better.
While both the rear and front cameras are capable of shooting video at 4K 60fps, the rear camera can even capture 8K at 24fps which is incredible for a compact phone.
The portrait video feature is neat and lets you blur the background while capturing footage involving faces. It works on both the front and rear cameras.
Battery Life & Charging
In terms of battery life, the 3700mAh built-in battery can barely last an entire day with medium usage with 120Hz refresh rate enabled and can go longer if with 60Hz and heavy usage. The battery is not the strongest area of the phone and Samsung decided to downsize the 4000 mAh battery found on the S21 due to advancements in processor and display technology.
Samsung does offer a power saving mode and other tweaks to help with battery management. The Power saving feature lets you turn off Always On Display, downclock CPU to 70%, disable 5G, and background app activity with a single setting.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
With these tweaks, you can extract better battery life out of the S22 but it’s not how anyone wants to run a phone on a daily basis and you shouldn’t have to at the flagship end of the market either. If you are a heavy user and want good battery life, you are better off picking the bigger Galaxy S22+.
In the PCMark for Android battery test, it lasted 10 hours 28 mins which isn’t overly impressive. Charging speed is limited to 25W compared to 45W on the S22+ and S22 Ultra. It means you’ll get 53% charge in 30 minutes which is a long way off even manymid-range phones.
Wireless charging and reverse wireless charging are nice to have though.
Software & Apps
The phone runs One UI 4.1 which is based on Android 12 and the overall interface is smooth and lag-free. You can customize the UI according to the usage very seamlessly and this is where One UI shines. I could remap the side key long press action from launching Bixby to the power off menu.
You can also remap the double press action to launch the camera, Samsung Pay or any other app installed on the phone. Edge panels let you quickly access your favourite apps with a swipe from the edge of the display. There is an easy mode which makes the icons and fonts larger and simplifies the overall UI for elderly or visually impaired users.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
The phone is mostly free of bloatware and does not include too many pre-installed apps other than Netflix, Facebook, OneDrive and a few Samsung apps. There are occasional notifications on the company’s new products.
Samsung promises four years of Android OS updates and five years of security updates which is market-leading support. There is also support for Samsung DeX which lets you use your phone in a desktop fashion when connected to an external device such as a PC or a TV.
Price & Availability
The Samsung Galaxy S22 5G was introduced worldwide in February and it is available in several colours. The S22 is priced the same as the S21 in most markets such as the US, UK and Europe but some markets saw a price hike such as India and Italy.
In the US, it is available on most operators and sold unlocked by most major retailers includingBest Buy,Amazon US,Amazon,Currys,John LewisandSamsung. We round up all thelatest Galaxy S22 deals.
In terms of alternatives, the S21 from last year is selling at a discounted price currently and is a good option if you are looking for a more affordable option but still want the flagship performance.
There is also theGalaxy S21 FEas well which is even more attractively priced. You could also consider theiPhone 13which is a good entry into the Apple ecosystem. Cheaper options include theGoogle Pixel 6andOnePlus 10Tif you don’t mind a larger handset.
Check out more options in ourbest smartphone chartas well as thebest Samsung Galaxy phone.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
Verdict
Today, most small smartphones are stripped down and lower-cost versions of the premium flagship offerings. The S22 manages to buck this trend and gives users an excellent all-rounder in a sophisticated package.
The Galaxy S22 series does come at a premium price point and the S22 sits at the lower end of the range but is more expensive than some rivals. The Galaxy S Series from Samsung has matured over time and the current generation feels refined and has a lot of things working in its favour.
Battery life aside, there are barely any major downsides to the S22. If you are a heavy user, get prepared to charge the phone more than once a day or carry a portable power bank.
It is not worth upgrading from last year’s S21 as the improvements are marginal. If you need better battery life and a larger screen and can stretch your budget, the S22+ is worth considering.
There are very few smartphones in the market that offer a flagship experience in a compact form factor and I hope to see more compact flagships from other manufacturers in the near future.
