Samsung’s flagship of 2022, the Samsung Galaxy S22 series is this year’s most hyped Android smartphone launch. The vanilla Samsung Galaxy S22 is said to be the truest Android competitor to the vanilla iPhone 13, but is it as good? We’ll tell you. The smartphone is priced at Rs 72,999 onwards in India for the base 8GB RAM + 128GB storage variant. Now, I have been using the most desired Android phone of this year for the past few days and in this article, I will tell you what I like about the Samsung Galaxy S22, what I don’t like about it, and if you should spend your Rs 72,999 on the Samsung Galaxy S22.
DESIGN
While in pictures and promos the vanilla Samsung Galaxy S22 looks quite basic, that is not the case. While yes, the design is basic, the smartphone feels very premium from the moment you lay hands on it. With a 6.1-inch screen, it is a very nice size – not big at all, but not small as well. It is just the perfect size and can be used with one hand very comfortably. The Samsung Galaxy S22 is super lightweight as well. I love the bezel-less screen implementation with no chin – feels very iPhone-like. The smartphone feels amazing in your hands and the build quality shows. I’d prefer this in the Green colour, but the white also looks pretty amazing. The smartphone’s flat front and back panels also make it feel better and very iPhone 13-like in-hand.
Up front, it has a hole-punch display design that Samsung calls the Infinity-O display. The back panel is plain, with the triple camera module mounted on the top left corner of the back panel. The Samsung Galaxy S22 has a chrome frame. The volume rocker and power button are both placed on the right side, and the USB type-C port, SIM tray, and the speaker grille is placed on the bottom.
In terms of design, the Samsung Galaxy S22 is basic and beautiful. The smartphone is the perfect size with its 6.1-inch display and is very lightweight. Most Android flagships these days are these chunky huge and heavy smartphones and in such a market, the Samsung Galaxy S22 comes as the only handy and compact Android flagship. The build quality is also good, and the smartphone feels very premium to just hold and use. The flat display is something I personally prefer, so that’s also good, and ofcourse the beautiful display makes the smartphone look pretty amazing when you’re using it as well.
DISPLAY
The display on the Samsung Galaxy S22 is brilliant. It feels super bright and super accurate, and ofcourse the 120Hz refresh rate makes the experience slick and precise. There is a 6.1-inch full-HD+ Super AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate. Being an AMOLED panel, it showed deep blacks and vivid colours. Users can also customise their display with two presets – Natural and Vivid, and customise further with Warm/ Cool temperature and RGB adjustment. The display looked very good even in bright sunlight and it never felt dull in any sort of a situation.
The display also supports HDR10 and HDR10+ playback which works across apps and games. Be it watching videos or playing games, it was a pleasing experience on the Samsung Galaxy S22 despite its rather smaller size. The 120Hz refresh rate makes the experience super slick while you normal social media scrolling. Samsung is known to put some of the best displays on smartphones and with the Galaxy S22, it has carried on that trend.
PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY
The Samsung Galaxy S22 comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset paired with 8GB of RAM in India. Of course, being a flagship, speed or agility is no issue for the Samsung Galaxy S22. I compared it side-to-side with the iQoo 9 Pro Legend, which comes with 12GB RAM paired to its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, and the Asus ROG Phone 5s that comes with a Snapdragon 888+ clocked at a much higher speed (both fastest Android phones on my person), and the Galaxy S22 was as fast as any of these high-performance gaming phones. At times, it even loaded some apps faster than both the iQoo 9 Pro Legend and Asus ROG Phone 5s. App loading times are minimal, and there are no app crashes or mistouches.
While it is super fast, the Samsung Galaxy S22 heats up quite a bit and quite quickly. While gaming or multitasking, or doing things like creating backup or downloading heavy files, or even charging, the Samsung Galaxy S22 tends to heat up, and it gets quite hot if you’re using without a cover. While the bottom part of the phone is still okay, the top half heats up more.
Coming to the battery, the Samsung Galaxy S22 has a small 3,700mAh battery which runs a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset with a powerful GPU.Battery is not the best part about the phone. On normal usage, you can squeeze out a full day’s usage easily, but if you game on the smartphone, it will drain pretty quickly. Even while multitasking the battery seems to drain quicker than normal, but it still averages out at more than a full day’s use. The Samsung Galaxy S22 gave me just under 13 hours of phone usage in one charge. Charging at 25W now feels slightly sluggish when competition is bringing up to 120W fast charging at a lower price. The Galaxy S22 takes over 1.5 hours to charge to 100 percent.
CAMERA
Camera on the Samsung Galaxy S22 is one of the best on any Android smartphone out there. There is a 50-megapixel primary shooter with PDAF and Optical Image Stabilisation, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, and a 10-megapixel telephoto lens for 3X optical zoom. Despite not being the flagship-flagship, the camera on the Samsung Galaxy S22 is nothing short of flagship quality. The images are absolutely clear. The colours are extremely accurate and the detail on images is superb.
There is very little to none AI over processing, and the images that come out are very editable and not at all overexposed. To some, the images might feel dull and less vibrant. This is because there is very little processing and the AI does not make it appear more vibrant by adding colours. Even the detail in images and the colour accuracy is better than most Android cameras out there. For images in properly-lit environments, the Samsung Galaxy S22’s camera is as good as an iPhone for still images. There is up to 3X optical zoom and up to 30x digital zoom on the Samsung Galaxy S22 and the images from the 3X zoom are crisp and clear, while 30x zoom is also pretty cool and shows things that are very far from you.
In low light, however, the processing is visible. While the images are again very detailed, the night shots do feel over processed and not as life-like as well-lit photos. No doubt, the images in low light night environments also look superb and are at-par with some of the best phone cameras out there, if not better. The portrait mode on the Samsung Galaxy S22 also works pretty well and the AI cuts edges quite nicely. For people it works quite nicely, while on objects, the AI processing is slightly evident (not that it does a bad job).
VERDICT
The Samsung Galaxy S22 is one of the most desirable Android smartphones out there in the market currently. It looks and feels very premium from the moment you hold it with the flat design and chrome rails, and it feels super light to hold in your hands. It is just the right size and does not feel bulky like other Android flagships with its beautiful and slick 6.-1inch display, and is super fast in all aspects of its performance. The battery backup is less than I’d have liked, and the smartphone heats up quite often. The 25W charging also feels sluggish now that we are in 2022. However, if you are in the market for the best and most practical Android phone that you can buy for daily usage, then the Samsung Galaxy S22 ticks all the boxes. This is the most direct competitor to the iPhone 13 in the Android flagship space.
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