Samsung officially reveals the Galaxy S22 series

It’s been everywhere already thanks to Samsung being leakier than a bucket with no bottom, but the Galaxy S22 is now official.

As expected, there are three S22 models, the standard S22, a larger version of it in the form of the S22 Plus and the range-topping Galaxy S22 Ultra, which is – unsurprisingly – the phone of real interest.

The Ultra is more like a Galaxy Note in scope and now has a dedicated slot for the S Pen stylus. All three phones have Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips in the US and Exynos 2200 chips developed by Samsung in collaboration with AMD elsewhere.

The S22 series is now seriously undercut in the Android sphere by Google’s Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, but the main thing is that prices haven’t gone up since the Galaxy S21 and S21 Ultra – the standard S22 starts at £769 for the 128GB version, rising to £819 for 256GB.

The larger Galaxy S22 Plus also comes in at £949 for the 128GB version and £999 for the 256GB version.

And the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra starts at £1149.

The Ultra boasts a whopping 6.8in QHD+ AMOLED screen compared to the 6.1 and 6.6in displays of the S22 and S22 Plus. All three phones have the smartphone spec du jour; a variable refresh rate up to 120hz.

The Ultra’s camera setup doesn’t mess about, with a 108MP wide snapper, a 12MP ultrawide and two 10MP telephotos with different levels of optical zoom. There’s also a 40MP selfie-cam, and all of them benefit from improved AI that processes up to four times more data when you take a photo, sharpening detail and reducing noise. And as you’d expect, the S22 and S22 Plus boast a triple camera with a 50MP main lens, 10MP ultrawide and 12MP telephoto.

The Ultra also boasts a 5000mAh battery that charges to 50% in less than 20 minutes, up to 12GB of RAM and a maximum of 1TB of storage, too.

Portrait mode now benefits from an AI Stereo Depth Map, which separates the subject from the background more naturally and stops people looking like cardboard cutouts.

Latency on the S-Pen has also been reduced from 9ms to 2.8ms, plus the AI can predict where you’re going to draw next. That should make the stylus feel smoother in use.

Samsung Galaxy S22, Plus and Ultra complete specs and features: everything you need to know

All three phones ship with Android 12 underpinning the latest 4.1 version of Samsung’s OneUI.

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Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website. Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.