The Mirror was invited down to KX, Samsung’s showroom store located at London's Coal Drops Yard for their first hands-on session of the year, to look at some of their exciting new devices.
The Koren technology giant has come a long way since their first android smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S1 back in 2010. Today Samsung announced its latest Galaxy experience, with its brand new phone: the Samsung Galaxy S23.
Continuing the trend from last year's S22 Ultra, Samsung has moved away from the Note Series but incorporated some of its features into their flagship model S series.
The S22 Ultra pushed the envelope of premium flagships with its incredible performance, high-quality camera, Stunning display, and inclusion of the S Pen.
Three versions of Samsungs latest flagships will be available, including the S23 Ultra, S23+ and S23. Each in this series clearly follows Samsung's previous versions, as well as its established design aesthetic. While they don't look too different from last year’s counterparts, however, under the hood there have been some serious upgrades.
Samsung Galaxy S23
Display: 6.1-Inch – 2340 x 1080 display
SOC: Snapdragon 8.G2
Cameras: 50MP, 12MP. 10MP
Battery: 3900 mAh / 25W
Pricing: 128-8GB = £849 / 256-8GB = £849
Samsung Galaxy S23+
Display: 6.6-Inch – 2340 x 1080 display
SOC: Snapdragon 8.G2
Cameras: 50MP, 12MP, 10MP
Battery: 4700 mAh / 45W
Pricing: 256-8GB = £1049 / 512-8GB = £1049
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
Display: 6.8-Inch – 3088 x 1440 display
SOC: Snapdragon 8.G2
Cameras: 200MP,12Mp, 10MP, 10MP
Battery: 5000 mAh / 45W
Pricing: 256-8GB = £1249 / 512-12GB = £1249 / 1TB-12GB = £1399
Of course, being Samsung devices, they all featured stunning, glossy, AMOLED 2X displays that can support 120Hz and can go as bright as 1700 nits.
I could not test much but from what I saw the smartphone features beautiful, saturated colours and incredible, sharp detail.
All models are available in colours Phantom Black, Cream, Green, and Lavender but there will also be a few exclusive colours that are going to be available online only from Samsung: lime, red, sky blue and graphite.
The 23 and 23+ feature a new integrated camera module making them more streamlined and cohesive with the ultra’s design. Even the glass on the lenses is less reflective to reduce any glare and lens flare.
Protection has been further enhanced with the 23 and 23+ using Gorilla Glass Victus+ and all are covered with an Armor Aluminium frame and are IP68 water and dust resistant.
Meanwhile, the S23 Ultra is the first phone to include Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 to protect the screen and offer improved durability than before.
The S23 series will use the latest SOC from Qualcomm while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 which will offer Improved day-to-day performance, more efficient battery consumption and enhanced graphical output.
However, Samsung also claims the CPU and GPU have been fine-tuned for the Galaxy S23 to offer even enhanced performance.
To allow the S23 to maintain peak performance and compensate for how hard the S23 pushes the new chip, the cooling Vapor Chamber has been enlarged making it more efficient. Sadly I didn’t get to test any games or demanding tasks.
Samsungs latest LPDDR5X RAM has been included, offering data processing speeds up to 8.5 Gbps, over 1.3 times faster than the previous RAM as well as using 20% less power. This will help greatly with gaming and more demanding apps, especially multitasking.
Another breakthrough included in the S23 Series is the brand new UFS 4.0 the fastest-performing flash Universal Flash Storage available while the S23 will be available in the following configurations.
Storage / RAM models:
S23 8GB + 128 storage / 8GB + 256 storage
S23+ 8GB + 256 storage / 8GB + 512 storage
S23 Ultra 8GB + 256 storage / 12GB + 512 storage / 12GB + 1Tb storage
Most impressively from 1 February till 15 February, any Samsung S23 ordered online will be upgraded to the higher RAM and storage option, so if you order an S3 Ultra 8GB/256Gb you’ll receive a 12GB/512GB model.
Samsung S23’s main camera unit features a new 200MP adaptive Pixel Sensor, which combines 16 pixels into one larger pixel which will capture more light allowing for brighter and more detailed shots even in the dark of night.
Upgraded from last year’s 108MP sensor, such a large pixel count means you can print to huge canvas prints as well as tightly crop into the shots while retaining high image quality.
The 10MP selfie camera on the S22 series has been replaced with a more vibrant 12 MP selfie camera and can now support Super HDR allowing a much larger range of colour and the ability to pick up on subtle gradients.
In the brief time I had the with S23 I found the camera to have improved clarity, especially at range, much better skin tone representation and they retain more detail in low light.
The S23 Ultra also took better low-light shots, focused faster, and the telephoto camera retained much more detail than last year's model.
Another new feature is Astro Hyper lapse which allows anyone to take beautiful Star trails without bulky or complicated equipment.
Brand new Super Quad Pixel technology uses the enormous pixel count to bring the subject into sharp focus of your image by using the 4 adjacent pixels to detect differences, which allows for faster and more accurate focusing due to it picking up on more reference points.
Filming in enormous 8K quality is available too at 30 fps allowing for a wider angle, higher quality, and the ability to crop into your footage more and retain quality.
To help with both nighttime photography and video capture the S23 Series will offer improved video stabilisation with 2x Wider OIS angle further stabilising footage and offering more accurate and natural video.
While the S23 Ultra uses the same 5000mAh battery the S23 and S23+ both see 200mAh boosts and all will benefit from the improved lower power consumption of the new hardware.
Samsung claims that the S23 ultra can offer around two days of power on standard use and one full day of intensive use which I will be able to verify until I try it for myself.
Fast charging is available on all models with the base model including 25W charging and the S23+ and Ultra will use 45W but none come with the fast charging brick supplied.
Samsung Knox has been updated and features a privacy dashboard that gives managing your data and clearer and more comprehensive prompts to prevent things like unwanted app tracking.
The S23 series also claims to be more eco-friendly than ever before by using more recycled aluminium, glass and plastics than previous devices and even the box is made from 100% recycled paper.
Operating systems on the S23 Series will all ship with Sasmungs latest OneUI 5.1 based on Android 13, which will include 5 years of security updates and 4 generations of OneUI and Android OS upgrades.
One UI 51 also will use a lot of personalisation to tailor your experience, “Routines” can trigger a set of actions on your device like Sleeping, exercising, or driving.
There is plenty here to chew on and the S23 looks to be a very impressive device, as soon as we get our hands on a review unit we'll put it through its paces. Samsung also announced some fantastic upgrades to their Galaxy book line up including an Ultra model.
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Series will be available to order from the Samsung website starting at £849
