Samsung's flagship Galaxy S23 Ultra has popped up in a Chinese TENAA regulatory filing, confirming some specs and causing confusion about some others.
Samsung isn't expected to announce its next line of Galaxy S phones for a little while yet, but the company is already going through the motions of getting ready for the big unveiling. That includes putting the phones through various regulatory databases to get all of its launch ducks in a row - and one Chinese regulatory database has outed the Galaxy S23 Ultra early.
The phone has popped up in the TENAA database and carries the model number SM-S9180. There are no images, but there are plenty of specifications to look at. Those specifications include dimensions of 163.4 x 78.1 x 8.9mm as well as a 4,855mAh battery that will likely be marketed as a nice round 5,000mAh. There's also confirmation that the Galaxy S23 Ultra will have a 6.8-inch display with a 3,088 x 1,440 resolution. Beyond that, we also get to see the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with upgraded cores that include an octa-core 3.36GHz configuration. That backs up a previous claim that the Galaxy S23 Ultra would get a special version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 all of its own.
However, the TENAA entry does confuse things slightly when it gets to talk of the Galaxy S23 Ultra's cameras. We'd already been told to expect a 200-megapixel main camera with a pair of 10-megapixel zoom lenses joined by a 12-megapixel ultrawide. However, the TENAA listing shows a 108-megapixel main camera and then two 12-megapixel cameras, and a single 2-megapixel shooter. It's thought that this is just plain wrong, though, and the database does have form for offering incorrect or placeholder data.
With that in mind, we'd suggest that the previous rumours are spot on and that we can still look forward to a photography powerhouse when Samsung finally gets around to announcing this thing in early 2023.