Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Gaming Review

Apart from its superior camera system, Samsung’s newest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S23 Ultra, has also been praised for its incredible gaming prowess.

Powered by the specially developed Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 For Galaxy processor, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is Samsung’s most powerful smartphone yet, as befitting a flagship. And as mobile gaming becomes more and more popular in recent years, it’s only natural that the 2023 flagship performs at tip-top shape.

But exactly what supports its powerful performance?

Hardware + Software = Perfect Combination

Of course, we’ve already mentioned the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 For Galaxy, which is one of the fastest mobile processors on the market. This ensures silky smooth gameplay in all of your games, from PUBG to Candy Crush — in fact, so smooth that I kept losing my way around the battleground!

Any gamer would tell you that graphics are just as important as processing power in gaming. For the Galaxy S23 Ultra, Samsung has upgraded the GPU by 41% and NPU by 40% compared to the Galaxy S22 Ultra, allowing for a more immersive and vivid experience.

Ray Tracing — PC What? Console Who?

Besides that, you’ll also be able to experience ray tracing, a graphics rendering technology only found on powerful PCs and dedicated gaming consoles, on the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Basically, ray tracing allows the phone to display realistic lighting, light reflection, and shadows, resulting in an amazingly immersive gaming experience in the palm of your hand.

And it doesn’t just end there – Samsung has plans to continue collaborating with global game distributors and game engine companies to further improve their GPU technology, so we can reasonably expect mobile gaming to just get better!

Display – How Bright Is Too Bright?

All the above is useless without the ability to actually see what you’re playing, so the display is just about as important as CPU and GPU performance. The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is one of the brightest screens on the market, with a peak brightness of 1750 nits. For perspective, your standard laptop screen only goes up to 200+ nits.

It’s one thing to be able to see your screen clearly under direct sunlight, but we all know that the best time to play mobile games is at night, in bed, with the lights off. For this, we probably don’t want our phones to shine with the light of a thousand suns.

Thankfully, the Galaxy S23 Utlra’s Adaptive Vision Booster automatically adjusts the brightness levels AND the colour contrasts so that your screen is still readable whether you’re in the light or the dark side. Compared to the Galaxy S22 Ultra, it now adjusts up to three levels, allowing it to adapt to all lighting conditions.

Work Hard, Play Harder (& Longer)

We’re all adults here (I hope), so there are some inevitable commitments that we cannot avoid no matter how much we want to, namely work. After all, the money to buy games has to come from somewhere, right?

Well, who says you can’t game and work at the same time?

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is not only powerful enough to tackle your games, but also your daily tasks — all at the same time! The CPU chipset in the phone has been improved by 30%, so you’ll be able to open plenty of apps (up to 15 in our experience) without experiencing any lag or stuttering. So if your boss texts you in the middle of a game, just swipe over, reply, and continue gaming seamlessly!

While the Galaxy S23 Ultra carries the same battery capacity as its predecessor, the power efficiency has greatly improved thanks to the hardware and software improvements, so you’ll be able to spend more time worrying about your game stats and less about your battery life.