Samsung launched the Galaxy S23 smartphone earlier this month. This has the same 6.1-inch screen, but it is now brighter, matching the other two models. This also has a faster Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, and a slightly bigger 3900mAh battery. Is this a good upgrade compared to the Galaxy S22? Let us dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- Samsung Galaxy S23 8GB RAM, 256GB storage version in Lavender colour
- USB Type-C to C Cable
- SIM ejector tool
- Quick Start Guide and Warranty information
Display, Hardware and Design
The phone comes with a 6.1-inch Full HD+ Infinity-O Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080×2340 pixels at about 425PPI, aspect ratio of 20:9. The display is bright, thanks to 1750 nits peak brightness, compared to 1300 nits in the predecessor. It offers good color reproduction and the sunlight legibility is good as well.
Since it has an AMOLED panel, it offers true blacks. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2. You can also notice minimal symmetrical bezels around the screen that makes it attractive.
It has a 120Hz refresh rate screen that offers a fluid user experience with smoother animations, scrolling and gaming. Unlike the S22 Ultra with an LTPO panel for 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate, this has 48 to 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, similar to the predecessor. In the gaming mode, it offers 240Hz touch sampling rate.
Similar to the other Samsung phones, there is an Eye comfort shield that limit blue light emitted by the screen. There is also dark mode. You can choose from Vivid or Natural screen modes based on your preference, or set the white balance manually.
The phone doesn’t have DC dimming or low brightness anti-flicker mode that is present in some AMOLED screen phones in the price range. I didn’t notice any screen flicker issues in low brightness on the phone. It doesn’t have notification LED, but there is Always on display.
On the top, there is a new 12-megapixel camera in the tiny punch-hole, and the earpiece is present on the top edge that doubles up as a secondary speaker. The punch-hole is small and it is not intrusive.
There is a small chin below the screen. The phone has an in-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor from Qualcomm that is present towards the middle.
The phone retains the Armor Aluminum frame that has a glossy finish. It is not prone to scratches, but it attracts fingerprints and might be slippery. You can see the antenna bands all around. Coming to the button placements, the power button and the volume rockers are present on the right side. There is nothing on the left side. The dual SIM slot USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are on the bottom. The secondary microphone is on the top.
It has the same vibration motor as the S22, but I feel the vibration motor in the S23 Ultra is slightly better.
On the back, there is a triple camera module arranged in a single line, but the camera bump is gone, so the cameras look bigger. There is a single LED flash next to the module. Even though the phone has a 6.1-inch screen, it is compact to hold.
Samsung has maintained the same 7.6 mm thickness and 168 grams weighs as the predecessor, even with a slightly bigger battery. The phone has a frosted glass back with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection, so it doesn’t attract fingerprints or smudges and is also not prone to scratches with day-to-day use compared to budget Galaxy models with a plastic body. However, it is recommended to get a case.
In addition to the Lavender colour variant that we have, the phone also comes in Phantom Black, Green and Cream colours. This comes with dust and water-resistant in freshwater to a depth of 1.5 meter for up to 30 minutes, with IP68 certification.
Camera
- 50MP main camera with LED Flash, 1/1.57″ Samsung S5KGN3 sensor, f/1.8 aperture, OIS
- 12MP 120° Ultra Wide sensor, Sony IMX564 sensor, f/2.2 aperture
- 10MP Telephoto lens with Samsung S5K3K1 sensor, f/2.4 aperture, 3x optical zoom, OIS
- 12MP front camera with Samsung S5K3LU sensor, f/2.2 aperture
You can choose 50MP option from the aspect ratio settings on the top, and the default output is 12MP instead of 12.5MP after pixel binning. It also has AR stickers, scene optimizer, portrait video, director’s view, hyperlapse and more modes. The Expert RAW mode is now present in the camera app instead of a separate app.
There is Live Focus mode for portraits, including a 3X mode that uses the telephoto camera for portraits. You can also adjust the bokeh effect before or after the shot. There is a selfie portrait option for the front camera that uses software to blur the background. There is also a wide-angle option for the front camera, similar to other Samsung phones.
Coming to the image quality, daylight shots are brilliant, and it captures in 12MP resolution after pixel binning. The camera captures a good amount of detail, creates well exposed photos with good dynamic range and detailing, and dynamic range can further be improved enabling HDR mode from the settings, which automatically turns on HDR when needed. Apart from the 3x telephoto zoom camera, the standard digital zoom is also good. The 10x and 20x zoomed photos are good. Autofocus speeds are fast and accurate. Ultra-wide shots from the 12MP camera are good in daylight.
There is no macro mode or camera, but you can use 2x from the main camera or use 3x telephoto for close-ups. Live focus is good at detecting the edges, and has seen a good improvement compared to S22. Low-light performance is good, which can be improved further with Night mode that offers more details. Images with flash is good and is not overpowering.
The new 12-megapixel front camera is good, capturing brilliant shots. Wide-angle mode takes images in 12-megapixel resolution, while the normal mode takes images in 8.6-megapixel. Software blur in the live focus mode has good edge detection even in low light.
Check out some camera samples.
The S23 offers 8K video recording at 30 fps, up from 24fps in the S22. There is 4K UHD video recording at 60 fps, Super Steady 1080p video at 60 fps, Super Slo-mo 720p video support at 960 fps, slow motion 1080p video support at 240 fps and Hyperlapse 4K video support at 30 fps.
The normal stabilization works with both ultra-wide and main camera, but only the main camera has OIS. You can switch between normal, ultra-wide telephoto and front cameras when video recording is in progress, but only in 4K 30fps or less. There is also HDR10+ recording that you can enable in the settings, which now supports up to 4K 60 fps.
Software, UI and Apps
Coming to the software, the phone runs on Android 13, and it recently got February 2023 security patch a few days back. On the top of Android 13, it has the latest Samsung One UI 5.1, which brings several new features such as Expert RAW, AI-based Photo Remaster that lets you remove shadows and reflections, improvements to dynamic weather widget, Smart suggestions widget and more.
Similar to older flagships, Samsung has confirmed 4 OS updates and 5 years of security updates for the S23 series.
The Device maintenance option lets you manage your device’s battery life, storage, RAM usage, and security all in one place. The 128GB version uses UFS 3.1, and only the 256GB version gets UFS 4.0. The 256GB model which we have has 222GB free space. Out of 8GB LPDDR5X RAM, about 7GB is usable and 3.5GB is free when default apps are running in the background.
There is also a RAM Plus feature, which uses the internal memory of the phone to expand the RAM by an extra 8GB, in addition to the existing 8GB of RAM. This is enabled automatically. Since this has UFS 4.0 storage, we got sequential read speeds of, 3349.11MB/s, which is over twice that of the UFS 3.1.
Apart from the usual set of utility apps and Google Apps, the smartphone comes with Facebook, Netflix, Spotify and Microsoft apps such as Microsoft 365, OneDrive, LinkedIn and Outlook. You get the option to install apps when you are setting up the phone, which you can choose not to. It also has Samsung Pass, Secure Folder, Bixby Voice/Vision, Samsung Cloud, Easy Mode and Samsung Knox support. The phone doesn’t have ads, but shows notifications of new Samsung products occasionally.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
The phone has Qualcomm’s in-display Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor Gen 2. This uses acoustic-based technology that reflects the unique features of a user’s individual fingerprint and is engineered to allow the device to detect a larger fingerprint image than the normal optical sensor.
You can add up to 4 fingerprints, and adding fingerprint is easy. It has support for Face recognition, which doesn’t work well if the lighting is poor in the room, if you use hats or sunglasses. Both these are protected by Knox security.
Music Player and Multimedia
YouTube Music is the default music player. It has equalizer, Dolby Atmos, UHQ upscaler, and Adapt that can be enabled from the settings. All these improve the audio when listening through earphones, and Dolby Atmos also works with speakers. It doesn’t have FM Radio support. That said, audio through earphones is good. Loudspeaker output from the stereo speakers is good as well, but I felt the iPhone 14’s speaker was slightly better.
The phone comes with Widevine L1 support out-of-the-box so that you can enjoy HD content on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar and other streaming apps. There is also HDR playback support for Netflix and YouTube.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
The Galaxy S23 has support for 5G SA with support for several 5G Network Bands in India, thanks to Snapdragon X70 5G Modem. Airtel and Jio 5G works out of the box. There is also 4G Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and support for LTE-A or Carrier Aggregation.
Other connectivity options include, Wi-Fi 802.11 6E ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Wi-Fi-Calling or Vo-Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.3 and GPS with GLONASS. It has support for USB OTG and NFC that works with supported payment apps. This lacks UWB which are present in S23+ and S23 Ultra models.
The Galaxy S23’s head SAR is at 0.869/Kg which well under the limit in India which is 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g). This is less than the Galaxy S22, which is good.
Performance and Benchmarks
The new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy powers the Galaxy S23 series. It has up to 3.36GHz peak speeds, compared to 3.2GHz in the standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has a new 1 + 4 + 3 microarchitecture that uses 1 x Kryo Prime Arm Cortex-X3-based CPU at up to 3.36GHz, 4 x Kryo Performance CPUs that has 2 x A710-based and 2 x A715-based CPUs at up to 2.8GHz and 4x Kryo Efficiency A510-based CPUs at up to 2GHz.
It is fabricated using the TSMC 4nm Process Technology, same as Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. For the first time, Samsung has added vapor chamber cooling in the base model.
We did not face any issues or frame drops in the graphic-intensive games like COD, BGMI and Genshin Impact. It reached maximum 44º in our testing indoors in Wi-Fi, but this might vary outdoors in 5G. Unlike the S22 in which Samsung limits the performance, the new game performance booster mode in the game launcher prevents the phone from throttling issues, but Samsung says it heats up the phone. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
As you can see, the scores are on par with other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phones.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone packs a 3900mAh (typical) built-in battery, compared to 3700mAh battery in the S22, while maintaining the same size. It lasts for a whole day with 5G, dual SIMs, and heavy multimedia use. I got about 5 hours of screen on time with two days of use with mostly on Wi-Fi, and occasional 5G use in 120Hz, which is a great improvement compared to S22. If you switch to Lite mode, the battery life gets even better.
It still has the 25W compared to 45W in the S23+ and the S23 Ultra. It takes about an hour to charge the phone fully using a 25W charger, and 0 to 50% takes about 25 minutes. Most competitors have a bigger battery that can charge in less than half the time. It still has wireless charging and reverse wireless charging.
Conclusion
Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S23 is a good upgrade to the Galaxy S22 in terms of display, performance without heating issues, and the battery life, mainly due to power efficiency of the chip and the optimization. This is the best compact Android flagship you can get in India right now.
Alternatives
If you can spend more, and don’t need a phone as compact as the S23, you can consider the S23+ which also offers a bigger display and a larger battery. If you are looking for the iPhone, the iPhone 14 is a good option, but it lacks a telephoto camera and comes with a 60Hz screen.
Availability
The Samsung Galaxy S23 8GB +128GB model is priced at Rs. 74,999 and the 8GB +256GB model is priced at Rs. 79,999. It is available from Amazon.in, Samsung online store and offline stores.
As a part of launch offer, buyers can get the 256GB model at the cost of 128GB model, which is a good deal. There is also flat Rs. 8000 instant discount with select cards or exchange benefits.
Pros
- Compact light-weight body
- Excellent 120Hz AMOLED display
- Impressive cameras
- Smooth performance
- Impressive battery life
Cons
- Priced slightly on the higher side compared to the S22
- UFS 3.1 in 128GB model instead of UFS 4.0 in 256GB
- Still limited to 25W charging