Samsung Galaxy A23 5G review

Android 13 and One UI 5

Our Samsung Galaxy A23 5G booted Android 12 with One UI 4 out of the box, but after the initial setup, we were greeted with a message that there was an update to Android 13 with the new One UI 5. We reviewed the phone after installing the new software.

The first thing we noticed is that One UI immediately felt smoother and faster compared to One UI 4.0. And, of course, then come the new features that are part of this One UI 5 update, which brings a lot more features than merely updating the OS to Android 13.

Core Android features are sometimes neglected by other manufacturers when they update their proprietary OS versions, but Samsung diligently implements them to its One UI. This year's intrinsic Android 13 features aren't many, and most of them are focused on the visual aspect of Android's Material Design looks. And since those are not applicable to Samsung's own take on how Android should look, this leaves us with privacy and notification-focused improvements.

Once you install an app and launch it for the first time, the system will ask whether you want the app to send you notifications or keep them disabled by default. Notification-related controls are now easier to access and will always appear around the top of the system menu. A direct shortcut to the app's internal notification settings can be found at the bottom of the notification panel. More granular control over what types of notifications apps can send - badges, floating notifications and notification cards on the Lock screen.

Separate language control for each app is also available, which makes us wonder why such а basic feature wasn't available before.

Privacy-wise, Android 13 now deletes clipboard data after a while because malicious apps were often exploiting the clipboard as users oftentimes copy sensitive data like phone numbers, emails, credit card numbers and even passwords.

Now, let's talk about One UI 5.

As we already said earlier, perhaps one of the biggest improvements is the overall performance of the OS. Ever since the ancient TouchWiz, Samsung's software has been infamous for its rather sluggish performance. And even though One UI is a lot better than its predecessors, it's still lagging behind its rivals in this regard. Literally and figuratively speaking. One UI 5.0 aims to fix that, and it does so up to a certain degree. Samsung has optimized animations and transitions, and they are sensibly faster and smoother. Everything feels more natural.

Other visual changes include better contrast, new app icons and illustrations across the system menus so that it's easier to recognize apps and read text.

Once again, the accent color palette is automatically generated based on your wallpaper, but this time around, the system gives you a wider choice of color combinations and that palette can also be applied to app icons.

Color palette

Widgets can now be stacked, and you can switch between stacked widgets with a simple swipe. Keep in mind that not all widgets support stacking, so app developers might have to get around that pretty soon.

Stacked widgets

Last but not least, the default dialer now picks animated backgrounds for each contact by default, so it's kind of easier to see at a glance who's calling. Unless, of course, you assign an AR emoji, a sticker or a photo of your choice.

The logic of One UI is still the same. The lock screen looks the same as before, with two monochrome shortcuts - dialer and camera. The side-mounted fingerprint reader will likely be the primary method of unlocking for most, but you can still use face unlock either instead of or alongside it. It can be more convenient in certain situations, but it generally is less secure since it's just using the selfie camera.

The lock screen is largely unchanged, as mentioned, and has a lot of customization options available. There is no Always-on Display on the Galaxy A23 5G.

Lockscreen and security options

You populate homescreens with app shortcuts, folders and widgets. The leftmost homescreen is Google's, as usual. App Drawer is present, too.

One UI 5

An easier way to launch two apps in split screen mode - a short swipe up from the bottom edge of the display with two fingers. The same action can be done through the recent apps menu.

We've already touched upon the new notification features that come bundled with Android 13, but Samsung took the extra mile to offer some small improvements of its own. The first thing you'll notice is that notification cards in the drop-down menu appear with a bigger icon of the app and a corresponding color. The text alignment in those notification cards is also optimized for better readability.

Notification area and controls

Samsung is introducing Routines, a feature similar to Apple's Focus. You can choose a mode based on what you are doing right now and execute certain actions, change sound profiles, display settings, notifications, etc. For instance, the driving Routines profile can be set up to turn on DnD mode and launch Spotify automatically, for example. You can even trigger certain Routines with actions of your choice, such as turning on the hotspot or airplane mode.

Routines

Samsung also made connecting with nearby devices a tad easier. In the Connected devices sub-menu, you will find available devices for Smart View connection (read screen cast) or Samsung DeX, where available. Chromecasts are easier to discover and stream audio too. When you play sound from your phone, nearby Chromecasts will appear on the quick panel.

And once you cast the phone's screen on a TV, for example, you can choose to hide your notifications so others won't be able to read sensitive information from your phone.

Familiar proprietary Samsung features present in One UI 5 include the Edge panels - the panes that show up when you swipe in from the side and provide tools and shortcuts to apps and contacts. Game launcher, the hub for all your games, which also provides options for limiting distraction when gaming is here to stay as well.

Otherwise, the software package is similar to other Samsung phones, with an in-house Gallery app, the Game Launcher app, and a proprietary file manager. Naturally, Samsung's Internet web browser is also available.

Gallery • Game Launcher • File manager • Edge panel

The built-in photo and video editors get a couple of new functionalities. You can create a sticker from any picture; there are more ways to edit GIFs now, draw perfect shapes on top of videos and photos using the pen tool, and you can find 60 new emoji stickers to add to your stills and clips.

Some small new functionalities spread across the system include exceptions for DnD mode (apps of your choice won't be affected by DnD), RAM Plus can be completely disabled through Device care, auto background optimization that keeps the system running smoothly, set up more timers simultaneously, expanded search in the My Files app, redesigned Digital Wellbeing, etc.

RAM Plus

There aren't any major changes to the camera performance or new modes, but there are a couple of neat new additions. For once, it's easier to zoom in and out with one hand, and you can add a custom watermark or a date on each photo you take, and the telephoto camera now supports Food mode.

Watermark

Performance and benchmarks

The Galaxy A23 5G employs the Snapdragon 695 5G chipset. This is a completely revamped chipset since the Snapdragon 680 behind the Galaxy A22 4G, one that comes with a 5G modem, more powerful GPU, and expanded support displays, cameras, among other things.

It surely is not the fastest 5G mid-range chipsets - more powerful Exynos platforms can be found on devices such as Galaxy A33 and A53, and there are many Dimensity 920 or up devices out there. But the SD695 should be enough for the A23 5G and its targeted price range.

This Snapdragon 695 5G is based on a more modern 6nm manufacturing process by TSMC, it supports mmWave 5G connectivity, and it has a more modern CPU (A78) and GPU. The octa-core processor of the SD695 has two Kryo 660 Gold (Cortex-A78) cores clocked at 2.2 GHz, and six Kryo 660 Silver (Cortex-A55) ones, working at 1.8 GHz.

The Galaxy A23 5G and its SD695 chip offer a newer Adreno 619 GPU (vs. Adreno 610 on the A23 4G).

The Galaxy A23 5G is available with 4GB, 6GB or 8GB of RAM. The storage options are 64GB and 128GB.

Finally, the SD695 chip supports dual 5G, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, NFC, GPS. Some of the competing MediaTek chips come with Wi-Fi 6 support, so there is some room for improvement.

And now, let's run some benchmarks.

The Geekbench 5 tests show the Galaxy A23 5G has a perfectly adequate processor. The scores are in the ballpark of its competitors.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 10 Pro+
  2371
• Realme 9 Pro+
  2335
• Realme 10 Pro
  2021
• Galaxy A23 5G
  1940
• Galaxy A33 5G
  1900
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  1820
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  1797
• Poco M4 5G
  1730
• Galaxy A22 5G
  1719
• Moto G62
  1697
• Galaxy A23
  1632
• Galaxy A22
  1372
• Galaxy A13
  588

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 10 Pro+
  842
• Realme 9 Pro+
  814
• Galaxy A33 5G
  742
• Realme 10 Pro
  698
• Galaxy A23 5G
  676
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  597
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  588
• Galaxy A22 5G
  560
• Poco M4 5G
  552
• Moto G62
  543
• Galaxy A23
  380
• Galaxy A22
  376
• Galaxy A13
  153

The GPU performance is behind what the Mali-G68 GPU offers as part of the Exynos 1280 5G chip (Galaxy A33, A53) and the Dimensity 920 5G (Realme 9 Pro+) and the Dimensity 1080 5G (Realme 10 Pro+). But it still seems like an adequate performer in this segment.

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  23
• Realme 10 Pro+
  21
• Galaxy A33 5G
  20
• Galaxy A23 5G
  16
• Realme 10 Pro
  16
• Galaxy A22
  16
• Moto G62
  14
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  13
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  13
• Poco M4 5G
  12
• Galaxy A22 5G
  12
• Galaxy A23
  6.7
• Galaxy A13
  5.2

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  41
• Realme 10 Pro+
  38
• Galaxy A33 5G
  35
• Galaxy A22
  30
• Galaxy A23 5G
  29
• Realme 10 Pro
  29
• Moto G62
  26
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  23
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  23
• Poco M4 5G
  21
• Galaxy A22 5G
  21
• Galaxy A23
  12
• Galaxy A13
  8.3

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  2296
• Galaxy A33 5G
  2260
• Realme 10 Pro+
  2252
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  1232
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  1231
• Realme 10 Pro
  1218
• Galaxy A23 5G
  1200
• Poco M4 5G
  1186
• Galaxy A22 5G
  1104
• Moto G62
  971
• Galaxy A22
  691
• Galaxy A13
  510
• Galaxy A23
  429

Finally, the compound AnTuTu test puts the Galaxy A23 5G in the middle of our chart, somewhat behind the curve.

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Realme 10 Pro+
  522376
• Realme 9 Pro+
  416031
• Realme 10 Pro
  401860
• Galaxy A33 5G
  394918
• Redmi Note 11S 5G
  360255
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  353663
• Poco M4 5G
  336380
• Galaxy A23 5G
  318821
• Moto G62
  303072
• Galaxy A23
  273554
• Galaxy A22 5G
  223188
• Galaxy A22
  165959
• Galaxy A13
  136286

The Galaxy A23 5G also aced the stress tests we ran, and it promises long-lasting sustained performance. The phone scored 80% stability on the CPU test and 99.7% stability on the GPU one.

It didn't get hot, just barely warm, when running either of these tests.

CPU test • GPU test

While the synthetic benchmarks demonstrate promising performance for the class, there is something you cannot know of at first, and that's the real-life performance, the day-to-day operations you rely so much upon. And this is where the Galaxy A23 5G fails.

This is what happens once you set up the phone, put all of your accounts and contacts, and start taking photos and videos - the Galaxy A23 5G becomes sluggish, and there is a noticeable lag or delay at times. It takes 5 seconds to take a non-Night Mode photo, the Gallery takes a while to load, same for Facebook, same for your contacts; there is always some loading and waiting - or stutters if you are more impatient.

We can only guess the reason behind this sluggishness, but perhaps 4GB RAM is not enough for Android and One UI to operate smoothly enough, not once you fill your phone with accounts and content. If you choose the A23 5G for your daily driver, we may encourage you to opt for the 6GB or even the 8GB RAM option. The 4GB RAM version just don't seem to cut it performance-wise. And while it's tolerable for a review week, it's a nerve-wrecking oddity you'd be dealing with for at least a year or two.