Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra’s battery recharging speed, and how its two refresh rate options affect its battery life!

 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra : Refresh Rate Affects Battery Life!

The new Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra offers two refresh rate options (Settings > Display > Motion smoothness) :

• Adaptive : Get smoother animation and scrolling by automatically adjusting your screen refresh rate up to 120 Hz
• Standard : Get longer battery life with a 60 Hz screen refresh rate

Last year’s Galaxy S21 Ultra also has an Adaptive mode, which dynamically refreshes between 10 Hz and 120 Hz

The new Galaxy S22 Ultra improves on that, with an Adaptive mode that dynamically refreshes between 1 Hz and 120 Hz.

By default, the Galaxy S22 Ultra uses the Adaptive mode, for smoother graphics, but you can choose to switch to the Standard mode for longer battery.

In the next section, we will look at how the two refresh rate options affect the Galaxy S22 Ultra’s battery life.

Read more : Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra : Our Hands-On Experience!
Read more : How To Setup Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra For The First Time!

 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra : Battery Life Comparison!

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra comes with a larger 5,000 mAh battery, which is the same size as last year’s Galaxy S21 Ultra.

To test its battery life, we turned off Automatic Brightness, and set its display brightness to 50%.

Why 50%? That is actually slightly higher than the average indoor brightness level of 40% during the day, and is what we usually use in all our mobile battery life tests.

It is important to fix the brightness level, to make sure the screen brightness does not change as the ambient brightness changes.

We then ran the PCMark Work 3.0 battery life test until its battery capacity dropped to 20% several times, and this was the best result we obtained with 60 Hz and 120 Hz refresh rates :

Will you look at that!

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra has a battery life of 10.5 hours with Adaptive refresh rate enabled, and a whopping 14.25 hours with the Standard refresh rate!

But let’s compare its battery life at 60 Hz and 120 Hz, against the S21 Ultra and Z Flip 3 smartphones.

Standard Refresh Rate (60 Hz)

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra really shines with the refresh rate set to 60 Hz.

The S22 Ultra used 20% less power per minute, which delivered 25% longer battery life than the S21 Ultra.

Work 3.0	S22 Ultra (60 Hz)	Z Flip 3 (60 Hz)	S21 Ultra (60 Hz)
Battery Capacity	5,000 mAh	3,300 mAh	5,000 mAh
Battery Life	14 hrs 15 mins	8 hrs 11 mins	11 hrs 22 mins
Utilisation per min.	4.68 mAh	5.38 mAh	5.87 mAh

Adaptive Refresh Rate (120 Hz)

While the Galaxy S22 Ultra certainly used less power than the S21 Ultra, that advantage was greatly diminished with the Adaptive refresh rate enabled.

The S22 Ultra used just 2% less power per minute, which delivered 2% (12 minutes) longer battery life than the S21 Ultra.

Work 3.0	S22 Ultra (120 Hz)	S21 Ultra (120 Hz)	Z Flip 3 (120 Hz)
Battery Capacity	5,000 mAh	5,000 mAh	3,300 mAh
Battery Life	10 hrs 38 mins	10 hrs 26 mins	6 hrs 44 mins
Utilisation per min.	6.27 mAh	6.39 mAh	6.53 mAh

 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra : Battery Recharging Speed!

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra supports up to 45 watts of wired fast charging, but unfortunately, does not come with the charger in-the-box.

So we relied on the standard 15 watt Samsung fast charger than shipped with their previous smartphones – something we believe most users will end up doing.

But we used the 25 watt charger for the S21 Ultra, because it came with that charger.

Work 3.0	S21 Ultra	S22 Ultra	Z Flip 3
Battery Capacity	5,000 mAh	5,000 mAh	3,300 mAh
Charger Output	25 watts	15 watts	15 watts
Battery Life	64 minutes	64.5 minutes	88.5 minutes
Recharging Speed (per minute)	62.5 mAh	62.0 mAh	29.8 mAh

Interestingly, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra recharged as quickly with a standard 15 watt charger, as the S21 Ultra with its more powerful 25 watt charger!

In fact, the Galaxy S22 Ultra recharged itself twice as fast as the Galaxy Z Flip 3, even though they both used the same 15 watt charger!

This is really good news. It means that Galaxy S22 Ultra owners need not worry too much about its recharging speed with the older 15 watt chargers.

In fact, you don’t really need to splurge on a new 45 watt fast charger. The Galaxy S22 Ultra fully recharges from 20% to 100% in just over an hour with the standard 15 watt Samsung charger!

 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra : Price + Availability

Samsung is offering the Galaxy S22 Ultra in four colour options – Burgundy, Green, Phantom Black and Phantom White.

I had the opportunity to attend an exclusive Samsung preview event, to check out all four colours for ourselves.

Note : Samsung only allowed us to use digital cameras, so the video is not stabilised as it would be with smartphones that I generally use.

Here in Malaysia, it is available starting 10 February 2022 in three variants, at these price points :

• 8 GB + 128 GB : RM 5,099 (about US$1,219 / £899 / A$1,699 / S$1,629)
• 12 GB + 256 GB : RM 5,499 (about US$1,314 / £969 / A$1,829 / S$1,759)
• 12 GB + 512 GB : RM 5,899 (about US$1,409 / £1,039 / A$1,959 / S$1,889)

Here are some online options :

• Malaysia : RM5,499 | RM5,499 | RM5,499 | RM5,499
• Singapore : S$1,858
• United States : US$1,199 | US$1,199
• United Kingdom : £1,149 | £1,149 | £1,249 | £1,249
• Australia : A$1,999

 

 

Recommended Reading

• Samsung Galaxy A73 : Exclusive Hands-On Preview!
• Samsung Galaxy A53 : Exclusive Hands-On Preview!
• Samsung Galaxy A33 : Exclusive Hands-On Preview!
• Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra : Our Hands-On Experience!
• How To Setup Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra For The First Time!

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