My Galaxy S22 Ultra is ultra jealous of the iPhone’s new color
Apple announced a lot of cool new stuff at its Peek Performance event today: a new iPhone SE, a newiPad Air, a new monitor, and a new desktop Mac. But despite all the impressive hardware, I was more focused on a detail that’s objectively minor in comparison: there’s a new green iPhone colorway, and sitting here with a not-really-greenGalaxy S22 Ultra, I’m very jealous of it.
People might complain that phones are all boring glass-and-metal rectangles anymore, but while that’s partly true, in the past few years, funky colors have become the rule rather than the exception. You can get ayellow Z Flip3, and thePixel 6comes in both green and pink variations. Heck, even the S22 Ultra comes ina bunch of great colors, including a very bold orange-red, exclusive to Samsung.com.
Now that’s a color.
But the green on the S22 series is just… not very green. It looks fairly subtle in renders, but it’s even less green in person. I might charitably describe the color as teal, butgreen?Get outta here.
The S22 Ultra in “green.”
Apple’s newAlpine Greencolorway, by contrast, looks like a delightful forest green, befitting its very Apple (that is to say, trendy and just a little pretentious) name. It’s possible it’ll be similarly disappointing in person, but I don’t see how it could be.
Samsung had the gall to rib Apple about this on Twitter, implying the iPhone’s glorious new verdant hue took inspiration from the S22 series’s weak almost-green:
There’s probably a broader point to be made here about managing customer expectations — if a product’s colorway is officially called “Green,” it should probably be, you know, green — but that’s not the point I’m making. I’m just bitter. I’ve been of the opinion that the S22 series’s green finish sucks since I got my Ultra a couple of weeks ago. I actually considered swapping it for the marginally more lively burgundy version, but I also knew I’d stop thinking about it soon — and for a time, I did. But now, in the face of this truly green smartphone, I have to reckon with the consequences of my decisions yet again.
Is this the kind of thing that makes someonechoose an iPhone over a Galaxy S22? Realistically, probably not; most people are just going tochuck their S22 Ultra in a caseanyway. And regardless of what color you get, the S22 Ultra is still one of thebest Android phonesyou can buy right now — it’d just be marginally better if it came in a proper green.
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