Would You Recommend the S22 Ultra?

[PaulC59]

I have had my S22 Ultra for a few Months now which is riddled glitches, some more problematic than others. I was really exited when I ordered the custom phone from Samsung for around 1.5k I had 1tb of memory and a nice gray colour and also got a bonus on top of my trade in.

My old phone was an S22+ just under a year old and after I sent it in a 3rd party company sent me a demand for £75 towards my upgrade as they said it gad screen burn despite being barely a year old. However as my S22+ was a good phone I figured an upgrade to an S22 Ultra would be a step up and the built in 1tb would avoid app memory availability issues when using an SD card

When the phone is working OK its great when glitches kick in its a real pain and often renders the phone useless e.g when Microsoft apps fail to load or network issues calls constantly dropping etc

I would not recommend anyone who relies on their phone to get an S22 Ultra and my experience with this leads me to be wary of any new releases from Samsung until they have been release for sufficient time for Samsung to resolve the bugs in their devices. Probably around a year or so

If I had the time to produce and send all of the bug reports to Samsung it would be like a full time job doing what Samsung should do before releasing new devices.

The worst problem is Network and Conbectivity issues, which include

Calls dropping despite there veing a strong signal

Wifi dropping in apps despite there being a full signal or WiFi connected but no Internet

Signal dropping for no reason, most noticeable when streaming I.e constant black spots of silence and spinning circle trying to reconnect

Apps crashing or disappearing from screen

Dead links on Web pages

MS Office apps crashing or failing to load

Occasional crashes I e phone seems to get overloaded and freezes, goes blank and then comes back on

Occasional cogs when restarting saying optimising apps or says phone didn't shut down properly

There are other Occasional issues that I can't quite remember but on the whole it is not a very stable phone and certainly not worthy of the price tag and title of a flagship phone

I have come to the conclusion that the bulk of the problems are linked to the phones inability to maintain a strong network connection as this not only drops calls and connections etc but it is a main cause for office apps crashing or failing to load I e if Internet drops, many apps crash or freeze

I also think the inferior processor used in EU phones has a part to play as the Snapdraggon whilst does have its issues, it is more stable than the Exynos or whatever its called? I believe Samsung may be dropping this inferior chip in future releases?

I'm not sure if the next update to Android 13 will improve things but doubt it, I believe the Google Pixel phones have had this for a while but not released by Samsung yet I think it will need a firmware update once Samsung can identify what's casing problems or maybe vendors linked Microsoft might find a workaround for their apps

So in conclusion, I have had Samsung devices for many years from TVs RAM SSDs etc and always find Samsung to be a better brand but my experience with Samsung Mobiles leaves a lot to be desired and this S22 Ultra has been one of the most expensive yet the worst experience to date

Hopefully Samsung will put a bit more effort into resolving the issues rather than relying on temp fixes such as users having to perform many resets, restarts clear this clear that bla bla bla and us as consumers can use our equipment with the bug testing and fixes already sorted before releasing expensive products to market

[Tourbillon De La Vie]

Early reports of the One UI 5 beta are favorable mentioning the performance and battery improvements

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi @PaulC59 

While I do not refute the experiences your having with your phone all I can do is pass comment on the experience I've been having with my Samsung Galaxy s²² Ultra 256Gb in Phantom Black Exynos SoC.

The only issue I've had is a scrolling issue with the Twitter App.

Network Signal and Data i.e 4G and 4G+ has been strong in most places I visit. Sometimes I've used a secondary network sim card if the network signal and data connection isn't strong in a particular area. I do not use 5G.

I prefer to remain on Mobile Data connection but when I'm at home my phone is set to automatically switch to Wi-Fi which is stable. I prefer not to use public Wi-Fi no matter how secure it seems.

The apps I use both pre installed and my downloaded one's appear to be fine however I do not prefer to use Google Apps , Google Chrome included as well as Microsoft Apps. I just don't have a use for them so I uninstall the one's I can and disable  / force stop the others.

If I had issues I certainly would send feedback to both Samsung and the app developers.

I've seen posts where a particular phone has had connection issues and unfortunately no end of self help troubleshooting would possibly help with that. I had a similar issue with a Samsung Note²⁰ Ultra.

I would suggest that an owner within their cooling off period asks for replacement or if beyond that seek support from a Samsung Service Centre or from the source that supplied the phone originally if not direct from Samsung.

One of the generic troubleshooting tips is to clear the phone's system cache partition files i.e  > Clear Cache Files from the phone's System Partition Section  > https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-do-i-clear-the-cache-on-my-device/ You may need to insert your earphones or hook upto a powered On Laptop to access the Clear Partition Section. This may help with lag or stutters as this clears the phone of old/unused or broken cache files.There is also a Repair Apps option in the Menu System too. However if the phone's core issue is the connection to Signal i.e hardware related then that wouldn't help in that instance.

I've owned both Snapdragon and Exynos versions of Samsung phone's and find that the optimisation on the Snapdragon is better which provides better battery stats.

It feels a little more fluid too.

[PaulC59]

Thank you for your reply. I have tried the cache wipes etc. The only step I haven't tried is a factory reset, which makes me hesitant to take to a service centre is this is something they would do. It may or may not resolve the issues but setting up after a reset can be a horrendous task especially when having to log in to everything and authenticator etc which can drop accounts and prevent 2 factor log ins etc. It is a possibility that problems may have been caused in initial data transfer from my old phone when first set up but its a big risk to test it out? Maybe a reset and restore backup may be less risky. Also I'm only using an esim so may have to request a new esim etc to set my calls and data back up so I'm quite nervous about a full factory reset

[PaulC59]

Thank you fir your reply, I've also read there are a lot of improvements in the new android OS fingers crossed

[leicesterMan]

They still haven't sorted the focus out on the Samsung galaxy s20 ultra , it started with the UI 4.1 update.

[Andy3]

Maybe you set you expectations way to high for a phone. Or you just simply need to do a factory reset to get rid of these issues/so called bugs. My girlfriends s22 ultra does not suffer these bugs. I say user error and not doing a factory reset before you ranted. A factory reset should fix all these little bugs. Or restart your device in safe mode to see if the behaviour happens then. If not its caused by a third party app you as the user has downloaded

[MubiN96]

Hi @PaulC59
Thanks for the review i was really hoping to buy this phone for a while and now you're telling that this phone has many issues, well this puts me in a tough situation. I think know why you've faced with these many issues this phone, could it be that the phone was custom ordered that had 1TB of memory be reason of you having these many issues with the phone.

[PaulC59]

Thank you for your reply. Your right when I pay one and a half grand for a phone I expect it to work. My expectations are nothing more than to expect the functions to work. Nothing more. I probably should have just returned the phone as its not fit for purpose but thank you for your input

[PaulC59]

It's possible but I think it could be related to using Samsung switch at initial set up. I use my phone for work as well as personal so probably use far more apps and functions than usual so it's possible I'm more likely to find bugs. When it works it is great but the issues are ad hoc with no apparent cause so there is something in the background the phone doesn't like. My advice would be if you try it out give it a good work out and any issues at all in the first week or so send it back or wait for the next model as I believe Samsung are not using the Exynos chip in future phones and may be using the snapdragon which seems to be a more stable chip