Samsung Galaxy S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra Thoughts: The Android king ‘fell off,’ in a way
Major competition, minor upgrades
A couple times a year, I take a break from talking about Apple and the rest of the consumer tech world here on Mac Technophilia to talk about Android phones. That time has come today — Samsung, at Unpacked 2023, announced their new trio of phones; the new Samsung Galaxy S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra.
After watching some first impressions, going through the event for myself, and diving deep into the specs, I’ve got thoughts — for the past 6-ish months, I’ve frequently said that I think the Pixel 7 Pro is the best Android phone on the market — as an iPhone user, I, like many Android users, believe in simplicity, aesthetics, and reliability — and Google hit the nail on the coffin with these three “pillars” of smartphone hardware and software. The phone, while not the most spec-rich, unlike the Samsungs it competes against, looks stunning and provides a stock Android experience I feel that should be the standard across all phones. I haven’t heard of a single Android user who prefers the bloated Samsung experience, with different accounts, assistants (remember Bixby? I’m sure you do if you use a Samsung device daily), messaging apps, and software skins that make the experience less cohesive and enjoyable. Many others have pointed to the iPhone as a solution to this jumbled mess until the start of the Pixel line of phones, and I think the 7 and 7 Pro handle it wonderfully. Not only is it pure Android, but it also gets all the latest features, and they arrive on time! Software updates are instant, pre-installed apps don’t exist, and you get helpful features like Google Assistant, which basically powers the phone’s intelligence. This is why I’ve advocated against the Samsung line of phones for a very long time — I think that what they’re doing with the foldables is game-changing, and you know that if you’re a frequent reader of Mac Technophilia — I believe in a future that relies on one device that’ll act as a phone, laptop, or tablet, and that connects to larger screens for desktop computing and television watching. But Samsung’s phablet/candy bar set of phones (aside from the budget phones, the cheap ones that seem to do the trick for many markets outside the US) have lacked appeal for me. They have bad software (in my opinion, many prefer OneUI and I think the Material You options added a year ago are nice), focus too much on the spec sheet, and worst of all, ship with a custom-made SoC outside of the US. I’d like to see if they can change that this year — I want them to make a unique phone with good upgrades, a good software experience, and to focus more on what people will do with the device rather than the spec sheet, which nobody cares about.
Enough prologue, let’s get to these announcements, starting with the S23 and S23+, the premium-but-not-quite-flagship phones. They’re practically identical, everything but screen size, battery capacity, and the total amount of storage you can get are the exact same. The S23 has a 6.1” display and can only go up to 256 GB of storage, whilst its brother can go up to 512 GB and sports a 6.6” display. Both phones look identical to each other, but also to their predecessors — unlike many have said last year, I prefer the boxier design introduced with the S22, which this year’s phones retain. I think it looks sharp and makes the phone stand out, like the iPhone. The only difference is the addition of some rings encircling the cameras, which are all separate from each other, unlike other devices which house them all in a mesa of sorts. Design-wise, they’re the same, and that shouldn’t be an upgrade factor (and even if it was different, I still don’t think it should be an upgrade factor, but that’s just me).
Speaking of things that are the same, a lot has remained unchanged throughout both models: both phones have 120hz LTPO displays with good contrast and colors — typical for Samsung. They also weigh the same, are sized the same, have the same water resistance, cellular connectivity (except for the addition of WiFi 6e, if that’s something you or your organization can take advantage of), and same biometric in-display fingerprint reader. It seems like they’ve carried over a lot of good from the old phones — but they’ve also brought a lot of the bad back, namely the removal SD card slot, which I dearly miss.
Both phones gain a usual chip upgrade — the SoC has now been upgraded to a “made for Galaxy” Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. As noted by MKBHD, the “made for Galaxy” branding is just pure nonsense and doesn’t present a performance improvement, but the actual SoC does. How much? We’ll just have to wait and see, but the GPU improvements should be notable this year. The chip, as mentioned before, brings WiFi 6e, but other than that, Snapdragon has been cryptic about the real year-over-year improvements over last year, which means they’ll be pretty minor. It’s obviously still a huge step up from the Tensor from Google but still doesn’t come close to Apple silicon (what does?). However, unlike stock Android or iOS, Samsung’s OneUI does an exceptionally poor job at resource management, so any upgrades in the speed department are welcome, especially if they also bring improvements to efficiency and battery life.
The biggest focus during the keynote address, however, was the camera system. While most of the attention was on the Ultra, which I’ll get to in a second, the standard models gain minor, but respectable improvements. First, the megapixel count on the front-facing selfie camera sensor has been boosted from 10 megapixels up to 12 — I don’t this is that important of an upgrade, especially because it’s the front-facing camera. Megapixel count ≠ better photos, and it certainly doesn’t mean more quality. What’s more important in a smartphone sensor is image processing and the actual size of the sensor, 2 places where the S23 hasn’t made any leaps in. We see budget phones come out almost every month with 66mp or 100mp sensors — the iPhone has 48 of those “same” megapixels. Does that mean that the budget phone takes better photos than the iPhone? No. Does it mean that the camera on the budget phone is automatically superior to the one on the iPhone? Of course not. What makes the iPhone camera so great is the amount of light it pulls in and what it does with that light. If you’ve read my iPhone 14 Pro review from last year, you’d know that I praised the larger sensor with yes, more megapixels on the iPhone 14 and called it a massive game-changer. Is this contradictory? Absolutely not — what Apple’s done is they’ve increased the sensor size, and with an increase in sensor size comes a proportional increase in megapixels and thus an increase in overall resolution that takes advantage of the light captured. The iPhone, like the Pixel, also does cool tricks with its added megapixel count, like doing an even crop of the pixels to make a 2x “lens” which looks better than the official-tissue telephoto lens from the iPhone 12 Pro. No, the camera on the S23 series isn’t worse like some have said — but what I’m saying here is that it doesn’t really make a positive difference in overall picture quality. It’s not like bumping the resolution of a video from 1080p to 4K — it’s simply not the same. The main camera gets no improvements, though, and neither does ultra-wide — the main sensor remains at 50mp, which I think is more than enough for any phone camera (that’ll be one of my talking points with the Ultra, see my megapixel myth buster above). Samsung say that the enhancements this time around come in pixel binning, which if you’re unfamiliar, groups sets of smaller pixels together to form a larger pixel, which allows the sensor to provide a more detailed image using the data from all the pixels added whilst keeping the resolution to a minimum. Apple started doing this with the iPhone 14 Pro, and it’s a game-changer, seriously. Samsung says this, atop better pixels (basically a higher-quality sensor) will allow for better light gathering which will, in turn, allow users to shoot better pictures. Of course, that’ll all have to be thoroughly tested, but it was the main focus throughout the whole event, and a lot of these talking points are carried over to the Ultra phone (which is quite the doozy…).
The second biggest enhancement that I actually favor is the beefed-up battery capacities — 3,900 mAh on the regular 23, and a monstrous 4,700 on the plus. This’ll make a real-world tangible difference from the previous generation, and I’m all here for it. Consumers want better battery life, and as 5G starts to steal that precious juice from us, bigger, fatter batteries should be the new norm. We’re done with the obsession over thinness — bring on the juice!
There’s a theme here with these 2 new entry-level models, and at large, the whole set of announcements from the day (I promise you the Ultra section is next, it’s just that a lot of the upgrades are shared between both models, so this is important information) — Samsung seems to be taking the Apple approach with its phone models this year, with incremental upgrades sprinkled throughout. The batteries have gotten slightly larger, the chip got slightly faster, and the camera got slightly better. But I imagine that if you put the phones side-by-side and actually used them, you’d be fine with either and discount the changes to chance. They’re not exciting, but there’s a reason for it — people buying a new phone in 2023’ll want to have the latest processor and those couple more megapixels to take their selfies. These minor upgrades are good — they help keep the space competitive and make technology better for everyone. The bigger question though, getting back to the first point I started this whole discussion with, is: does this make Samsung the king again in my eyes? And the answer, for me, is no. Instead of focusing on these minor bumps, Samsung could instead have tried to nail the manufacturing processes down to a science to lower costs. The S23 isn’t a bad phone, but it starts at a whopping $800. That’s a huge penalty. Meanwhile, Google ships a better camera, mediocre display, better software experience, an (in my opinion) better design, good battery life, and a custom processor for $200 less than that. The S23, despite its good specs, isn’t a well-priced phone, and I still don’t think I can recommend it to anyone who wants a decent Android flagship for a good price that’ll get lots of software updates. It doesn’t change Samsung’s vision, it doesn’t make them look more appealing, and doesn’t raise the bar. It’s boring, and at a time when other phones are pushing the boundaries, Samsung’s laziness isn’t going to work. I don’t like this price, I don’t like the focus, and I don’t think it’s the best bang-for-your-buck mobile.
I say the same thing about the long-awaited S23 Ultra. As soon as the Pixel 7 Pro came out, I immediately said that the S22 Ultra was a bad buy, and even after the new model, the S23, I stick by this idea. The truth is, Samsung hasn’t done enough to make me buy the ‘everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink idea. Sure, the philosophy makes sense — make a big phone, throw all the power you can put into it, sell it at a high price, and upgrade it incrementally over time. This is, essentially, what Samsung has done for the past 2–3 years with the Ultra lineup. I don’t necessarily mind it, and I know it works for a lot of people who want to feel confident they have the “absolute best,” but as many of you know, I don’t think that specs are all that matter in a phone. This phone is a beast, and nobody can take that title away from it — but just because it’s a beast doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable to use.
A lot remains unchanged this year with the S23 Ultra, similar to its smaller brethren. It still has the same gorgeous, massive, HFR screen that’s 6.8”, OLED, HDR10+, and 425 PPI. It still has the same SPen for drawing on the screen, something I’m envious of all the time. It has the same selfie camera, battery capacity, design (aside from a slightly boxier look that I honestly prefer), and all the other Galaxy goodness you’d expect. As I said, it’s a minor upgrade with things largely looking and feeling the same.
What makes this minor upgrade at all vs a minor… nothing is the new camera. Samsung says that it has put its first 200mp sensor in this phone — and well… I’m underwhelmed. And kind of frustrated. I don’t think there’s a point! Go back and read my whole rant on how megapixels don’t matter to understand why, but I think that this deserves a whole separate rant: who the hell needs 200mp on any camera? Imagine taking a 1080p video and simply up-sampling it to 4K. That doesn’t make the movie any better, it just increases the dang number count that shows up when you hit ‘get info’ and look at how much space it takes up. It simply doesn’t make sense! Instead of prioritizing aperture (which granted, has been slightly tweaked to accommodate the new influx of megapixels), Samsung and the wise brains who work there decided it was a tremendous idea to crank the resolution to 200mp! I mean, yeah, sure, it sounds cool, but who’s buying that?! And from what I’ve seen, yes, the images look slightly more detailed when you zoom into the little cat hairs and stuff, but you know what? I’m done. Shoving more numbers into a phone that has enough numbers doesn’t impress me, it taunts me and makes me think the company has gone bizarre. And to everyone fawning about this: why? Have you not realized that image processing makes a significantly more substantial difference than this nonsense? I’m fed up here — I just need to go on this tirade. Samsung could have increased the size of its sensor providing better depth of field, adding more light improving night mode, and making the shutter faster all while providing a superior RAW mode that would ditch pixel binning for a stunning shot. It did absolutely **none of that.**This makes me irrationally angry — I don’t see the point of it, and would not buy this phone for whatever value (?) it brings. /endrant. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
There’s more “new” stuff though other than the camera I’m clearly very concerned about — all the new stuff is pretty much shared between both the S23 and the Ultra. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 brings better SoC performance (though, from what I see, it’s limited to only the US market, which is a shame) and WiFi 6E, the colors are new, there’s been a slight bump in video frame rate — you can now record 30 FPS 8K, which I guess is exciting, and the phone is slightly thicker. If any of these matter to you, which for me, they don’t, you can buy it at a… hold on, $1199? And that’s my main problem with the S23 Ultra. Samsung, and I hate to use this word, “fell off.” This price is ridiculous, and for the mediocre software experience, I just can’t recommend this phone or ever see myself using it.
These 3 phones are all minor spec bumps, and I guess that’s the norm these days. But with such rigorous competition in the space, Samsung has to get its candy bar act together. They’re good phones, but at bad prices.
