The Note is dead. Long live Galaxy S Ultra.

While the writing has been on the wall for some time, Samsung formally announced the demise of the Galaxy Note at the Mobile World Congress 2022. The famous product series, which debuted a decade ago, will now be known as the Galaxy S Ultra. You might argue it's the end of an era.

However, the crossing was unavoidable at some time. With Samsung breaking new ground in the foldable space and making its latest and best folding phones compatible with the S-Pen, there was a good risk that the Galaxy Note—as iconic as it is—would have been lost in translation. There may be counter-arguments that the Note was unique, but to be clear, the transfer appears to be solely in name, at least at the time of writing. The Galaxy S22 Ultra, the first of what we hope will be many such crossovers, is essentially a recycled Galaxy Note.

The relocation is financially feasible. Having two separate product lines competing for the same type of consumer isn't always a smart idea. However, there is another potentially significant advantage. A tighter portfolio, particularly on the flagship site, means Samsung can devote more software attention to a phone like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, fine-tuning it over time and improving the experience by leaps and bounds over the length of its existence. That's presumably why it was able to declare prolonged support for it (among other things), with four main operating systems and five years of security upgrades assured, providing Google anything to think about while putting every other brand on notice.

Recently, Samsung has achieved gold status with One UI, releasing updates quicker than any other brand we can think of. While its phones are often regarded as the sole viable alternative to an iPhone in the West, there are a plethora of alternatives in India. While the competition is catching up in hardware, Samsung's newfound dedication to software propels it beyond every competitor brand, re-establishing it as the uncontested flagship leader. In that regard, our review model of the S22 Ultra is running Android 12-based One UI 4.1 with the February 2022 patch.

The S22 Ultra is a noteworthy crossover that was bound to happen at some time. The Note will undoubtedly be missed, but it now goes by another name—the S22 Ultra—and, based on initial impressions, it lives up to the anticipation. 

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