Hands on with the Samsung Galaxy S22: Talking Tech podcast

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Hey there listeners, it's Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. Friday's a big day for Samsung. It formally launches the Galaxy S22, which of course as we know is the electronics giant's answer to Apple and the iPhone 13. It's going to be available in three forms, the standard S22, the S22+, and the S22 Ultra. I write about this for a story that you can read on tech.usatoday.com. I actually spent a week with these phones and I share some of my thoughts.

Before I dig into all this, I want to give a little context. This is my first time ever using a Samsung Galaxy phone. And I'm sure when you hear that, the first thing you're thinking of is, how is this guy who hosts a tech podcast and covers tech and writes about tech how have you gone all this time never using a Galaxy smartphone?. I'm fairly new to the tech review game as far as products, so I didn't really have a reason to use a Galaxy phone. I have used an iPhone for the longest time. And interestingly enough though, not my first phone. My first phone was an Android phone. It was the Motorola Droid X, which came out I think around 2009, 2010.

And that was my first experience with the Android. So what got me off Android and onto Apple, it really came down to at the time, Android was kind of fragmented. So there was a lot of confusion about what phones get updated and when and what versions. And there was a zillion questions. And I thought to myself, "You know what? Apple has the iPhone and it controls the OS. I'm going to go with that because I have a better understanding of how that's all going to work." So I switched over to Apple.

Then I started using this Galaxy S22. And from my experience, it's a super nice phone. I get why Android users love Samsung phones. I get why also the more I used Android the more I'm like, I kind of get why they might get annoyed when Apple does great stuff that Android's already done like Android's got a lot of really cool stuff and I think it gets overlooked because the Apple and iPhone just overtake anything.

So I got to test out the S22+, and I got to test out the Ultra. My first impressions. They're both really nice phones. The screens are gorgeous. The S22 has a 6.6 inch screen. Ultra's is a little bit bigger. Honestly, I really like the Ultra. I loved that giant screen. It was nice. I liked the wraparound effect. So it literally felt like you just had all screen in front of you. It wasn't like there was any border. It was literally just all screen all over the place. Everything on the phone felt bigger, better. And it's funny because the screen was big, but the phone itself doesn't feel big per se in terms of I put it in my pocket and it's just in my pocket and I don't necessarily notice it that much. My concern with a phone like the Ultra was like, okay, I'm carrying around an iPad in my pocket, but that's not the case.

They've made this phone very light and thin and just right where I put it in my pocket and feels comfortable with it. When I use it, it's a pretty big phone. I feel like it feels just as good as an iPhone. The photos look great. The one big feature that Samsung was pushing this year was night photography and the improvements there. I tried this in a couple of different scenarios. I did it at night, walking my dog, and then I just randomly was out taking pictures of trees and stuff like that, which I'm sure my neighbors were thrilled about and not creeped out at all. But I took pictures of a couple of spaces and I tried to find spots where there was as little light as possible. And even in those spaces, the Samsung pictures came out really nicely and they looked really good.

You could see a lot of details in the tree branches. My dog wears a harness, you could see all the colors from that, just they came out really, really nicely. The other reason I love the Ultra is the S Pen, it is a small stylus. It's when you hold the phone, you go to the bottom, there's a little button you push and it pops right out from the bottom. My first thought was, I don't need a stylus. This is for a phone. This makes no sense. But the more I used it, the more I learned that there are some tasks where I actually really liked having the S Pen. If you take a photo, you want to mark it up super easy with the pen, if you're doing work related stuff and say, you need to add a signature to a document, again S Pen is awesome.

So there are definitely some touches there where I felt like, you know what? this S Pen actually makes sense and I could see myself using it and again, it slides right back into the phone, you don't even notice it when it's inside the phone. It's great. It feels great. Battery life for the most part, I think both phones held up really well, obviously got more in a day on a single charge. When I recharged it for the Ultra, I got from about 20% battery to 90% in about an hour, which isn't too bad. I'd say I got to about 50 maybe in 30 minutes or so. So it was pretty quick. I mean, it was like, you could get from 20 to 50, it was fairly quick. You just put it on there for about a half hour, you're good to go. And the S22+ again really nice device too.

I got to test it out in a pink gold, it's a beautiful color. It really pops. And again, I really enjoyed both phones. The thing that jumped out to me though, was Android. And again, I haven't used Android in a while and I was really pleased. I think the thing that jumped out to me is, I use a lot of Google services and there's a lot of great stuff it does with Google services because obviously they make Android. It works great. There's a widget for Gmail and I know Android users are listening to this right now being like, oh, you finally joined the party. Welcome to 2015 or whatever but anyway, it's nice, they have a widget for Gmail and you can scroll your inbox really quickly. And if you see a message you can pop on and click and that's it, you don't have to click the app or anything. It's literally on the widget.

That was the one thing I noticed too about the Galaxy phones with Android that I like a little more than Apple right now. I feel like the Android widgets have a little bit more functionality than the Apple ones and I really like that. But again, Android users know this and I'm sure would be saying this. They're like welcome to the club finally or maybe they're just like, wow, this idiot finally decided to join the right side. I don't know what they're thinking right now. The big question though, is would I replace my iPhone? Again I feel like, honestly, both these phones are very comparable. They do a lot of the same stuff really well. They definitely feel like they're on par. It's obvious why Samsung has been kind of the big kind of rival to Apple because their phones are very, very good and they are very comparable.

This is where it gets interesting though, on a couple fronts. First off, the thing with Apple and this goes for any service or any tech company in particular, they take great efforts to create services that keep you intertwined to the point where if you're thinking about untangling, it takes a little time because I'm like, okay, I have apps on the app store. I have this, I have this, I have this. It's not that bad. The apps aren't as bad, but then you might have subscriptions, you might have Apple music, you might have other stuff. There's a little bit of untangling there that makes it a little tougher to just completely cut yourself off. Right. I think that's part of it. The other part of it too, I can't believe I'm saying this is the text bubble stuff. And look, I think part of me is like, this is ridiculous.

Like I have a green text bubble. If I'm using Android phone, why does it matter? But apparently it does. I was reading recently about an NBA All-Star, Jarrett Allen, who plays for the Cavaliers and he had joked about how he had to get an iPhone to be involved with a team group chat because they didn't want to put him in because they wanted all blue bubbles from the iPhone. And I'm just like, that really happens. And so I had to second guess like, is this really a thing? I don't know. It's probably not and I'm overthinking it, but even still the fact that that comes up and that's a thing is kind of remarkable.

But I will say this, I think the S22 is a really great device. I definitely have had second thoughts about Android now. I feel like Android seems like it's a really great operating system and I honestly want to try out these phones even more because I want to just dive into Android more, because I feel like there's stuff that I'm missing and I just want to learn more about it. Right. But there you go.

If you want to read more about the S22, if you want to yell at me on Twitter about why I'm finally figuring this out and why I'm such an idiot, you can do that too. You can find me @brettmolina23. Oh, by the way, if you have any comments or questions or show ideas, any tech problems you want to try to address, you can hit me up on Twitter too. Also hey, if you're an Android phone owner and you have tips, if you have advice, if again you want to yell at me, whatever, just hit me up. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcast. Don't forget we also have a newsletter. It comes out every Thursday, go to newsletters.usatoday.com to subscribe to the Talking Tech newsletter. You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.