Samsung Galaxy S23 review
- N
- Nick Tegrataker
- Xpf
- 09 Feb 2023
I would say S23's camera is a decent upgrade over last year's S22, with generally better handling of details and colours in finer details - Makes sense because this year it's all Snapdragon, no Exynos (The Exynos variant always had suffered from terrible image processing for some reason). There's still a lot of sharpening applied to the image in 12.5MP, but at least I'm seeing less oil painting effect which was the biggest complaint I had with the S22 series' cameras. The low light performance is noticeably better too with much less sharpening, although I can spot some detail smoothing at higher ISO.
The new 50MP mode is much better than last year's "Detail Enhancer" crap, although it's pretty evident that the lens is simply not up to the task. When comparing it to S21's 64MP camera, or the main cameras from iPhone 14 Pro or Mate X2, you can see that the contrast can get very low even near the centre depending on where you look (such as the brush tip on GSMArena's "Good Light" studio scene). It's also disappointing that 2x digital zoom doesn't utilise the extra resolution gained from its high-resolution sensor.
Other than that, I don't have much to complain about this phone. The display is nicely bright (Although it's questionable that GSMArena completely omits its deltaE value from the review), the battery life is significantly better than S22, it throttles less and speakers deliver improved sound quality over its predecessor's. I don't have any reason to buy this phone personally, but it's got some decent value if you buy it with career bundles or when it's on a discount, and if you're really looking to buy a Samsung phone.
- g
- go2ftr
- DgD
- 09 Feb 2023
If it only would have S-Pen compatibility then it would be sooo much better than the S23 Ultra and it would be an easy pick: Flat display and compact body is great. Now I probably will buy neither the S23 nor the S23 Ultra and hope for the S24 series... again another year waiting and hoping that things will improve. Samsung (and competitors) do not give enough real choice to customers. All Sxx should have S-Pen support...
- L
- LOL
- uH@
- 09 Feb 2023
I'm always worried about smaller phones having a crappy battery life. Glad to see the S23 won't have this problem.
The base storage of 128Gb on the S23 is underwhelming though, since Samsung's One UI and preinstalled apps on a fresh new S23 already takes up around 37Gb. That's more than a quarter of storage space removed before you even start using the phone.
- ?
- Anonymous
- IW1
- 09 Feb 2023
Do S23 telephoto lens support OIS, there's no mention of OIS in the specs page but the camera section review mentioned that telephoto lens is stabilised (OIS).
- H
- Hemedans
- fuZ
- 09 Feb 2023
Shellyman Studios, 09 Feb 2023And it's crazy why they're still using Exynos. Th... morePixel 6A is just $299 right now if they go to mediatek they will be using D1080 now, their sales have Gone up and now they sell more pixel than ever, those pixel are best flagship killer right now.
- M
- Manooj
- pRG
- 09 Feb 2023
Got one. Gorgeous little boy!
- M
- Madoshi
- ajN
- 09 Feb 2023
Tigolebitties, 09 Feb 2023They know. They mentioned it as weird bcs Kioxia already ha... moreKioxia 128gb ufs 4 is lower performance almost similar to ufs 3
- E
- Eric20
- NMv
- 09 Feb 2023
Anonymous, 09 Feb 2023Did you look at the low-light studio shot comparison? Prett... moreYes. I looked at low light performance too. It isn't any better.
Granted, the iPhone 14 Pro is even worse than S23.
- s
- shun
- uQ5
- 09 Feb 2023
"Charging Bypass" - has been asking for years, finally someone listened:-
https://www.techspot.com/news/97538-samsung-galaxy-s23-feature-can-bypass-battery-charging.html
Hope more devices follow!
- Tigolebitties
- IVx
- 09 Feb 2023
Anonymous, 08 Feb 2023"The older UFS 3.1 storage chips on the 128GB model ar... moreThey know. They mentioned it as weird bcs Kioxia already has UFS 4.0 in 128GB and that Samsung preferred to use their own slower storage instead.
https://m.gsmarena.com/128gb_samsung_galaxy_s23_to_use_the_old_ufs_31_storage-news-57375.php
- A
- An0n
- XUD
- 09 Feb 2023
Anonymous, 09 Feb 2023Did you look at the low-light studio shot comparison? Prett... moreHuawei P40 still rocks on low light photoshoot though, better than most if not the best
- ?
- Anonymous
- sXH
- 09 Feb 2023
It's kinda disappointing how even high end phones like this, with variable refresh rates, don't support 25Hz and 50Hz, since in Europe TV derived videos and livestreams use these rates.
- M
- Minas
- xIS
- 09 Feb 2023
So Samsung decide to get rid of the exynos for first time in years get an exclusive version of the snapdragon that is boosted and do nothing for the heat creating a same bad phone as the exynos that they had all this previous year's
Idk what wrong with them and they keep trying to prove that android users are same as apple but yeah, android have 100 more choice with much less money that won't care for a fansy camera when the phone offers lack of standards compare to the competition
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- Anonymous
- sBS
- 09 Feb 2023
Shellyman Studios, 09 Feb 2023And it's crazy why they're still using Exynos. Th... moretoo bad this doesn't help for emulators
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- Anonymous
- Cxn
- 09 Feb 2023
mrleft, 08 Feb 2023Can we stop using the term "compact" for anything... moreCompact is necessarily going to be a relative term. Arbitrary definitions are not very useful if nothing qualifies for the criteria.
- m
- mrleft
- xGw
- 09 Feb 2023
Anonymous, 09 Feb 2023Can you propose an alternative terminology then? If in 2023... moreMaybe they could just use "small phone", or more accurately "smallest phones?" Compact implies very small, IMO. Certainly nothing that was the size of a phablet from 5 years ago. hah
I wish there was a wider range of small phones available
- ?
- Anonymous
- rKH
- 09 Feb 2023
mrleft, 08 Feb 2023Can we stop using the term "compact" for anything... moreCan you propose an alternative terminology then? If in 2023 I want to buy the smallest phones available, how do I search for them?
- s
- swaraj
- Hkt
- 09 Feb 2023
I stopped read after "it has same camera sensor as the s22 model" 😏
- ?
- Anonymous
- vjX
- 09 Feb 2023
Eric20, 08 Feb 2023The main camera seems to have same image quality when compa... moreDid you look at the low-light studio shot comparison? Pretty obvious which phone performs best.
- ?
- Anonymous
- vjX
- 09 Feb 2023
Roddyz, 09 Feb 2023Camera samples looks so bad compared to Oneplus 11Your eyesight is bad.