The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is making my wife regret going to iPhone

Here I was, minding my own business, making jokes, and watching Samsung take 30 minutes talking about the camera. Then, my wife passed by me and said “that camera sounds amazing.” Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but she just upgraded to the iPhone 14 Pro Max a couple of months ago.

This marked her first foray away from the Samsung ecosystem, as she had previously used Samsung phones for years, and her Galaxy S22 Ultra is now nestled quietly away in a drawer. But all it took was for her to hear Ridley Scott and the different presenters go on about how the Galaxy S23 Ultra is “pushing the boundaries of technology” for her to be lured back to the dark side.

As someone who daily’s an iPhone, and has for years, I felt as though I had finally reached the point of no return, especially with her knowing about my saga when it comes to dealing with eSIM. Nope. All she heard was “200MP camera” and “Astro Nightography” for everything to come unraveled. 

But what’s really sticking out to me more than my wife wants to make the switch is a thought that I had during the presentation. Samsung spent buckets of money, at a time when layoffs are happening across the tech industry, to bring in two directors, and spend what felt like an eternity talking about the “new and improved camera system.” My thought was, “outside of the tech nerds, who’s going to care this much about the camera?” As it turns out, it might actually appeal to more of the “normie” crowd than I thought.

So what is it about Samsung’s event that actually intrigued her? Well for one, she’s a camera nerd, dabbles in photography on the side, and went to film school in her younger years. She’s heard the claims of an iPhone being the superior camera for most instances, doesn’t care one iota about the Pixel, and became further entranced with the addition of Samsung’s Expert RAW application. 

My wife doesn’t (and won’t) care that you can’t actually snap 200MP images, nor does she care about “Super Quad Pixel” and how it will work. What she does care about is that Samsung does things right (for the most part) when it comes to the camera software. Even if you don’t use Expert RAW, Samsung’s stock camera app has enough extra switches, toggles, and dials, to give you more control over your photos than what you’ll find from Google or Apple. The Pixel 7 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max still largely apply the “you don’t need to adjust anything” mindset to taking a picture. 

While I had no intentions of pre-ordering the Galaxy S23 Ultra, that’s exactly what I ended up doing, dusting off the Galaxy S22 Ultra from the drawer, wiping it clean, and getting it ready to trade in. But thanks to Samsung’s awful trade-in promotions for the S23 series, I’ll be selling her iPhone 14 Pro Max somewhere else to recoup the rest of the cost.