The Galaxy S23 Ultra convinced me yearly upgrades just aren’t worth it anymore

For a long time, I upgraded my phone every year. Samsung made it easy with its upgrade program here in the UK, and it was always fun to open up a shiny new phone after the next model was announced. The upgrade program ended just before Samsung launched the Galaxy S25, though, so I traded in my Galaxy S24 Ultra for a Pixel 10 Pro, which left me with an “aging” Galaxy S23 Ultra. After re-using it for a bit, I can see how pointless yearly upgrades are.

I know — many of you reading this will find my conclusion obvious. Most people don’t upgrade every year. Even so, it’s worth looking back at how a phone like the S23 Ultra has aged. It provides context for how well subsequent models will mature, and reminds those of us who do like to upgrade more often that it isn’t worth it.

The image above features a Galaxy S23 Ultra and an S24 Ultra. Can you tell which is which? I owned both phones for over a year, and I can hardly tell them apart unless I look closely at the details: The S24 Ultra (right) doesn’t have curved glass on the front or back. The similarity of design means the S23 Ultra doesn’t feel like a phone that will be three years old in 2026. This year’s S25 Ultra tweaked the design more, and it is easier to identify, but even so, the S23 Ultra still feels like a more modern smartphone.

Not much has changed beneath the surface, either. The S23 Ultra has the same 12GB of RAM and 5,000mAh battery as both of its predecessors, as well as the same wired and wireless charging speeds. What has changed is the SoC, but the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is still an incredible chip in 2025, and the phone hasn’t so much as dropped a frame in any game or app I ran on it. That’s a stark contrast to the older Galaxy S22 Ultra, which, like many Samsung phones at the time, shipped with an Exynos chipset here in the UK. The S23 Ultra was the first Samsung phone I’d used in a long time that didn’t feel like a compromise.

Battery life is a little harder to gauge on an older phone, obviously. This one hasn’t been used much in recent times, but batteries age over time even when they aren’t in use. Even so, this S23 Ultra is managing almost identical battery life to my S24 Ultra, which I used daily for a year and a half. I’ve been averaging at least six hours of screen time, and the phone always lasts until bedtime before I need to plug it in.

The cameras on the S23 Ultra have aged well despite the upgrades Samsung made to the S25 Ultra. The primary and 3x telephoto lenses are largely unchanged between the two phones, with the main difference coming from the periscope lens. The S23 Ultra has a 10MP 10X periscope camera, while the S25 Ultra has a 50MP 5x periscopic lens and a brand-new 50MP ultrawide camera. In all measurable ways, the 5x camera on the S25 Ultra takes better photos than the 10x lens on the S23 at almost any zoom level, thanks to the increased resolution. Despite that, I prefer the 10x lens from the older phone.

The 5x camera on the S25 Ultra makes the 3x lens feel redundant. The difference in quality between them is noticeable, and the difference in zoom isn’t big enough to justify both cameras. You’ll always get a better photo if you use the 5x lens instead of the 3x and take a few steps back. The older S23 Ultra’s 10x zoom is worse, sure, but it was more fun to shoot with and encouraged me to experiment with the lenses more than the newer phone ever did.

As an overall package, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is a blast to take photos with. So long as you don’t mind Samsung’s tendency to boost saturation, the images you’ll take with this phone still hold up today. All of the photos in the gallery above are from my first year with the phone, and it captured a lot of good memories for me. From Cornish beaches and an unexpected London Heron to West End shows, concerts, and Optimus Prime, the S23 Ultra never disappointed me. Sure, the lowlight shots from Back To The Future and Fall Out Boy are grainy and blurry in places, but the photos still capture the memories wonderfully.

Curved screens have fallen out of favor now, but the Galaxy S23 Ultra has reminded me why they were popular in the first place. This display is gorgeous from every angle, and nothing feels better than performing a back gesture on a curved edge. It feels smooth, silky, and more satisfying than I remembered. Would I want Samsung and other manufacturers to go back to curved screens like this? No. I love the look, I love the feel, but I don’t love the issues with screen protectors. Trying to protect a display like this is always a compromise — either you protect the whole thing with a plastic screen protector that scuffs easily and feels cheap, or you get something glass that doesn’t cover all the edges.

Ignoring the curved edges, the S23 Ultra has a beautiful screen. It’s sharp, smooth, and looks just as good as any modern phone most of the time, although the experience does deteriorate once you head outside. It lacks the anti-reflective coating of Samsung’s newer phones and can only reach 1,200 nits peak brightness, while both of its successors can reach 2,600 nits and are noticeably easier to see outdoors.

The S Pen is one of the things I love most about Samsung’s hardware, and it’s at its best in this phone. The Galaxy S25 Ultra controversially dropped Bluetooth support from the stylus, removing a lot of the features that made it so beloved. On the S23 Ultra, you can use gestures to perform commands on the phone without touching it, use it as a remote shutter button, and more. Samsung said it removed the feature because it wasn’t used by many, but even if that’s true, I can’t see a benefit to the removal, and it makes the S Pen feel like an afterthought on the newer phone.

Finally, the software on the Galaxy S23 Ultra has held up as well as the rest of the phone. It took longer to get it than the newer models, but it does have One UI 8 and Android 16, and it has all of the important new features. In fact, the only things I could find that aren’t available are Now Brief and Audio Eraser, which is hardly a big deal. One UI 8 feels as fresh and as smooth on this phone as any other, thanks in large part to how well the hardware has aged.

The only downside to the S23 series is how many updates these phones will receive. This generation of Samsung products was promised four years of Android updates with a fifth year of security patches, making Android 17 and One UI 9 the final major update for this phone during 2026. That’s not bad going, and it is certainly better than most other Android phones from 2023, but it falls short of the seven years of combined OS and security updates the Galaxy S24 and subsequent phones will receive. Based on how well this phone has aged already, I have no doubt that it could easily handle more updates than it was promised, but it’s unlikely Samsung will extend its support window.

During my year and a half with the S24 Ultra, I always felt a level of buyer’s remorse, and revisiting the S23 Ultra has made me realise why. The S24 wasn’t a bad phone, but there was little change between the two phones, and it never felt special to me. Even when you compare it to the S25 Ultra, there still doesn’t feel like much of a reason to upgrade. The new ultrawide camera is nice, but the design is growing stale, and the removal of Bluetooth from the S Pen stings. The S23 had a gorgeous design, especially in the red and black combo I had, fun cameras, and it finally brought a Snapdragon chip to the UK. For those reasons, it will always be one of my favorite phones.

The sensible part of my brain has always known that upgrading each year is silly. It made a degree of sense for me — having the new phone to use and write about was a sensible work decision. Unless that’s your situation too, don’t let the marketing trick you. When a new phone comes out, the manufacturer and your carrier will do their best to convince you to upgrade with shiny contract deals, pre-order bonuses, and trade-in offers. It’s seldom worth it. Unlike a decade ago, flagship phones age with grace, and in the case of the S23 Ultra, it’s a phone I’ll always love.

Do you have an older phone you refuse to get rid of? Or a phone that got away, that you wish you’d kept? I’d love to hear about it down below.