Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra’s battery recharging speed, and how its two refresh rate options affect its battery life!
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra : Refresh Rate Affects Battery Life!
The new Samsung Galaxy S23 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
The Galaxy S21 Ultra also has an Adaptive mode, which dynamically refreshes between 10 Hz and 120 Hz.
The new Galaxy S23 Ultra and last year’s S22 Ultra improved on that, with an Adaptive mode that dynamically refreshes between 1 Hz and 120 Hz.
By default, the Galaxy S23 Ultra uses the Adaptive mode for smoother graphics, but you can choose to switch to the Standard mode for a longer battery life.
In the next section, we will look at how the two refresh rate options affect the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s battery life.
Read more : Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra : Hands-On Preview!
Read more : Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Performance Examined!
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra : Battery Life Comparison!
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra comes with a 5,000 mAh battery, which is the same size as Galaxy S22 Ultra and the 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 S23 Ultra has a battery life of 13 hours with Adaptive refresh rate enabled, and a whopping 15.3 hours with the Standard refresh rate – 24% and 7.5% better respectively than the S22 Ultra!
But let’s also 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 S23 Ultra really shines with the refresh rate set to 60 Hz. It used 7% less power per minute, which delivered 7% longer battery life than the S22 Ultra.
| Work 3.0 | S23 Ultra (60 Hz) |
S22 Ultra (60 Hz) |
Z Flip 3 (60 Hz) |
S21 Ultra (60 Hz) |
| Battery Capacity | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 3,300 mAh | 5,000 mAh |
| Battery Life | 15 hrs 18 mins | 14 hrs 15 mins | 8 hrs 11 mins | 11 hrs 22 mins |
| Utilisation per min. |
4.36 mAh | 4.68 mAh | 5.38 mAh | 5.87 mAh |
Adaptive Refresh Rate (120 Hz)
While the Galaxy S23 Ultra certainly used less power than the S22 Ultra, that advantage was greatly diminished with the Adaptive refresh rate enabled.
This is where we see the greatest improvement in the power efficiency of the S23 Ultra. Its display used 18% less power per minute, and delivered 22% (almost 1.5 hours) longer battery life than the S22 Ultra.
| Work 3.0 | S23 Ultra (120 Hz) |
S22 Ultra (120 Hz) |
S21 Ultra (120 Hz) |
Z Flip 3 (120 Hz) |
| Battery Capacity | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 3,300 mAh |
| Battery Life | 13 hrs 0 mins | 10 hrs 38 mins |
10 hrs 26 mins |
6 hrs 44 mins |
| Utilisation per min. |
5.13 mAh | 6.27 mAh | 6.39 mAh | 6.53 mAh |
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra : Battery Recharging Speed!
The Samsung Galaxy S23 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 | S23 Ultra | Z Flip 3 |
| Battery Capacity | 5,000 mAh | 3,300 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 3,300 mAh |
| Charger Output | 25 watts | 15 watts | 15 watts | 15 watts |
| Battery Life | 64 minutes | 64.5 minutes | 88.8 minutes | 88.5 minutes |
| Recharging Speed (per minute) |
62.5 mAh | 62.0 mAh | 45.0 mAh | 29.8 mAh |
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra fully recharges from 20% to 100% in just under 1.5 hours with the standard 15 watt Samsung charger. Oddly enough, this is significantly (38%) slower than the S22 Ultra.
It’s hard to know whether this was an intentional design decision to reduce the thermal output while charging, or to drive the adoption of the 45 watt chargers (sold separately).
Fortunately, the Galaxy S23 Ultra has a significantly better battery life, which should offset the slower recharging speed. Frankly, I don’t see a real need to splurge on a new 45 watt fast charger.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra : Prices + Pre-Order Offer!
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra comes in four main colours – Phantom Black, Green, Lavender, and Cream.
Sadly, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra will be significantly more expensive than last year’s Galaxy S22 Ultra!
Here are the official launch prices for the three available storage capacities:
- 256 GB : RM5,699 (about US$1,336 / £1,083 / A$1,888 / S$1,755)
- 512 GB : RM6,199 (about US$1,453 / £1,179 / A$2,052 / S$1,910)
- 1 TB : RM7,199 (about US$1,688 / £1,369 / A$2,388 / S$2,218)
While the increased price may be disappointing, Samsung is offering some great pre-order offers:
- you get a free upgrade to the next storage option!
- if you buy from the Samsung Online Store, you get an RM400 e-Voucher
- you get 30% off Samsung accessories, Samsung Care+, Galaxy tablets, Watch, and Buds earphones!
- you get to save up to RM600 more when you trade in!
Here are online purchase options for your convenience:
- United States : $1,199 | $1379.99 | $1,495 | $1,495
- United Kingdom : £1,249 | £1,399 | £1,399 | £1,399
- Malaysia : RM5,699 | RM5,699 | RM5,699 | RM5,699
- Singapore : $1,599 | S$2,098 | S$2,098
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
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Recommended Reading
- Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra : All You Need To Know!
- Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus : All You Need To Know!
- Samsung Galaxy S23 : Everything You Need To Know!
- Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Colour Options Compared!
- Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus Colour Options Compared!
- Samsung Galaxy S23 Colour Options Compared!
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