Most recently I’ve owned and used an S21 ultra (had it since launch and kept for a bit over 2 years), a Pixel 7 pro, and an S23 ultra.

I’m very disappointed with the pixel 7 series. I came from a 6 pro and the cellular modem was the reason why, and the pixel 7 pro cellular, while improved, was still unreliable and slower than qualcomm-based ones in the S21 and S23 series. I’m not talking in the context of “the S23 gets 900mbps down while my 7 pro only gets 450mbps”–there are real cases and situations where my S23 ultra has no intteruptions in cellular while my 7 pro struggles, has intermittent cutouts, and is very frustrating. In the same locations and same times.

The biggest issue with my 7 pro is battery life. It’s pretty terrible. For my usage, I take it off the charger at 100% at 7:45 in the morning, use it mostly indoors on wifi most of the day, no 5g, no taxing use, no games, and after 2.5h of screen on time over the period of 12h, it’s easily down to 35% battery max. There’s basically no battery longevity. My wife recently got a pixel 7a from a pixel 5 and her battery is equally awful. Google’s tensor SOC is just very inefficient. We took a short overnight trip for an outdoor wedding, and the day of the wedding when I took a reasonable amount of photos and videos–nothing extreme–I had to charge up my 7 pro in the middle of the day. Plus the thing was COOKING when i was taking photos and videos during the wedding. The display brightness dimmed down to the point of being unusable. Other than the 6 pro, I’ve never had any phone behave like this under similar situations.

Like I mentioned I went from my 7 pro to an S23 ultra, primarily motivated by battery life, and the experience has been amazing. With the same usage on my phone as I outlined above, my S23 ultra is rarely below 70% battery over the same period of time. It doesn’t get warm–at all. Cellular reliability is great.

I go between google and samsung phones a lot. I like aspects of both softwares a lot. I find I miss many of samsung’s software additions in lots of ways because they are sometimes-niche things that make general use better/easier. That may be one thing you should also consider beyond just performance, battery life, and specs.

If you are deciding between the S23 and S22 series, I would say that while most things are generally similar between them–even on the ultra with the changes to the camera the actual results aren’t really significant–the big thing is battery life and thermals. The 8 gen 1 in the S22 was not very efficient. the 8+ gen 2 in the S23 is a significant jump in efficiency, and that is reflected by battery life. As far as performance goes, you’re very unlikely to notice an experience difference in virtually everything that one does with a phone.

So I would recommend the S23 series.