Samsung Galaxy S23 review: A tame beast

Samsung’s Galaxy S23 series represents extremes.

On one hand, you have the Ultra, which is a specification extravaganza with its 200MP camera and 100x zoom, while on the other hand you have this, the base S23 model that adopts a more conservative approach and may come across as simple to some.

But, the question is, can simplicity be just as remarkable as complexity? Let's find out!

Design

The S23, with its 6.1-inch display, might be considered compact by modern phone standards, however, I’d call it perfectly-sized instead of compact. 

You can easily fit this phone in your pocket, yet it has enough screen real estate for you to type comfortably and enjoy watching content. In fact, it strikes such a perfect balance between form and function, that you question the need for a bigger phone.

Coming to the phone’s build, you cannot mistake it for anything but an expensive phone. The glass sandwich design with an aluminium frame is very well constructed and feels great in hand. It is also protected by gorilla glass victus 2 on the front and the back.

Since the frame is rounded, it feels much better to hold than many competing phones with flat sides. 

The rear glass features a matt finish, which makes it quite immune to fingerprints, however, I do believe that the colourways on this phone are rather bland. Then again, that’s a personal choice. What do you think about these colours?

The most prominent change on the S23 versus the S22 is its new camera island, or the lack of one, perhaps. The lenses are now directly embedded into the back panel. 

I love clean and uncluttered designs, and I would have loved this new look if it remained exclusive to the Galaxy S series. But, Samsung believes that making all their phones, from budget to flagship, look similar is a good idea. I disagree. 

Anyway, coming to the front, I’m really pleased with the fact that the bezels, including the chin, on this phone are extremely slim. It goes a long way in adding to the overall premium look of the phone. There is also a centrally mounted hole punch for the selfie camera, which is about the current Android phone standard until in-display cameras become better.

Display

You expect an excellent display on a Samsung flagship and the Galaxy S23 does not disappoint. 

This 6.1-inch Dynamic AMOLED panel has a resolution of FHD+ and an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz. It is also HDR10+ certified. 

Since it is a fairly small display, it features a pixel density of 425 ppi which makes it quite sharp. 

Typical of Samsung AMOLEDs, the colours are quite punchy and the viewing angles are great. Also, Samsung has bumped this display’s max brightness to 1750 nits this time around,which will prove to be quite a boon in summers.

Utility

The S23 comes with an in-display ultrasonic fingerprint reader, which remains quite accurate and decently fast. 

You’d also find stereo speakers on this device and the audio quality is fantastic with good bass, great vocal clarity and a high peak volume. 

You get dual 5G SIM slots on this smartphone. I used it with a Jio SIM card and experienced no issues whatsoever. The earpiece and mic performance were also great

As you’d expect in a flagship device, there is no expandable storage here, however, you do get up to 256GB of storage here. 

As before, this smartphone comes with an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, and it can survive in 1.5m deep water for half an hour.

The haptics on this phone are also top notch. 

Performance & Software

The S23 features a customised Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy SoC. This chipset is nothing but an overclocked version of the 8 Gen 2, and unless you are fixated on benchmarks, the difference in performance won't be very noticeable between this custom version and the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. 

Also, there is no Exynos version this time around, so no matter where you live in the world, you will only get Snapdragon's latest and greatest. 

The standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has already gotten a lot of praise for its performance, and this custom version improves performance a bit more. 

At the time of filming this review, it features the most competent graphics on any smartphone, outclassing even the A16 Bionic on 3Dmark. Now that’s quite a feat.

As a result, it does not break a sweat playing heavy games. The phone does feature an improved vapour chamber based cooling system this time around, which means that it does not get uncomfortably warm even after extended gaming sessions.

However, it will not maintain its peak performance for very long, for that, it is always recommended to go with a dedicated gaming phone.

Coming to software, the S23 comes with Samsung’s latest OneUI 5.1 out of the box that’s built on top of Android 13.

One UI is a feature-loaded Android skin which is extremely likeable for the most part. The on-board 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM also ensures fast multitasking. However, do keep in mind that OneUI’s animations do tend to get slower over time. 

Also, while you get 128GB or 256GB of internal storage options, the former is a UFS 3.1 type, while the latter is the faster UFS 4.0 type. 

Now, 128GB isn’t enough on a phone that expects you to shoot at 8K, so I’d definitely recommend you to go for the 256GB version. 

But what really makes OneUI a preferred choice among Android skins is its update cycle. You will get 4 major Android updates and 5 years of security updates with the S23, and Samsung now has a proven record of actually delivering these updates on time, even on its older flagship models.

Cameras

The triple camera setup on the Galaxy S23 is virtually unchanged from that of the S22.

Is that a bad thing? Well, if you already have an S22 and are planning to upgrade, then you may think twice, otherwise, not so much. 

The S23 has a 50MP primary camera, a 12MP ultrawide camera and 10MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom. 

With this camera system, you can go from .6x all the way to 30x. While this isn't as crazy as the Ultra, this level of versatility is still very underrated.

Talking of the main camera, its performance impressed me quite a bit. Since it's a Samsung, you do get punchier colours than the real scene, but most of the time, the processing is spot on and very pleasing to the eye. 

The HDR performance of this camera is also pretty impressive, and so are the night time shots. 

Videos from this camera are also impressively crisp with a very good amount of detail.

Details are also surprisingly well preserved in low light videos as well. Then again, saturation levels are definitely boosted in videos as well.

Also, you can now shoot at up to 8K at 30 fps with the main camera.

However, there is a slight issue. The post processing algorithm really seems like the colour red. Even with all optimisations disabled, the reds are over processed.

The 12MP ultrawide camera does an impressive job as well. But, the colour processing here is slightly more aggressive, so its photos can end up being slightly inconsistent with the other two sensors. 

However, nighttime shots taken with the ultrawide are quite good by secondary camera standards. 

You can shoot at up to 4K 60 fps with this sensor, but the real impressive part here is the super steady mode which works superbly.  

Now let’s talk about that telephoto camera. It’s an optically stabilised sensor with a 69mm lens.

This camera is quite consistent with the main camera. It can also shoot videos at up to 4K 60 fps and the footage comes out to be quite stable thanks to OIS. 

You can also go beyond 3x with up to 30x hybrid zoom. Quality definitely takes a toll beyond 3x, but it's more about the fun you can have with this much focal length, and you’d be glad it exists. 

Coming to the front, there’s a new 12MP selfie camera on the entire S23 series, which takes some pretty impressive selfies. It also shoots stable selfie videos at up to 4K 60fps, but it did find them to be oversharpened. 

You also have manual photo and video modes available with all cameras if you’d like tighter control. Then, there are also a host of other modes available in the camera app which should keep social media addicts happy.

Battery Life

Battery life was a major caveat with the S22 and Samsung has tried to fix it on the S23 with a larger 3,900mAh battery.

The good news is that they've succeeded. It will easily last you a day even if you are a heavy user, with a screen on time of around 8 hours, which is quite spectacular going by this phone’s footprint. 

Not so spectacular are the charging speeds, which at 25W wired and 15W wireless, are nothing much to write home about. 

Verdict

So, that’s the S23, a kind of a tame beast. Its specifications may not wow you, but behind that predictable spec sheet is a flagship phone that excels at almost everything.

It is not exactly affordable, but flagship phones are never about good value anyway. For the money you spend, you’ll get a powerful and dependable Android smartphone which will stay updated for the next 4 years.

Now that makes the Galaxy S23 quite a winner!

Also watch: Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: 200 Reasons Why