The Dxomark for Samsung’s latest smartphone, the S23 Ultra, shows marked improvements over the S22 Ultra making it the best Android phone on the market, and the best for video performance, overall. It may lag Apple’s top of the line offerings, the iPhone Pro and iPhone Pro Max, but the differences in performance are minor.
In the extensive tests, the S23 Ultra showed readability in most lighting conditions, but had some issues under indoor lighting conditions and bright sunlight. The video performance was exceptional with refresh rates that adapt to the frame rate of the content being played. Most of the issues tend to be minor but, in direct comparison to Apple, the contrast was not as good, and colors were a little faded. On the other hand, the S23 Ultra can tend to oversaturate colors while maintaining the same hue.
Ideally, a real like-for-like test of the Samsung display would have it running under iOS. Samsung’s phones have had issues in the past with the over-saturation of colors and any workarounds needs some expert hacking at core OS components. There are fundamental differences between Android and iOS and how they both handle video and audio outputs. So, Samsung has done much better than one could have hoped for with these scores because while Apple is responsible for top-to-bottom development and integration of its software and hardware, Samsung can only so much given that Android has its own, monolithic structure. We should really be thinking about what more can be done by Android to level the playing field with iOS. So, Samsung is doing better than Google with Google’s OS, given that both companies have enough resources to deliver the best hardware. Apple exists in its own bubble, happy and snug.
