Samsung Galaxy S23 Series First Impressions: More Features, More Money?

Samsung Galaxy S23 Series — comprising the Samsung Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, and Galaxy S23 Ultra — was launched by the company during its first Galaxy Unpacked event of 2023 on Wednesday. These phones are expected to be Samsung's flagship smartphones for this year, and are powered by a custom version of the most powerful Qualcomm chipset you can find on a smartphone today. Meanwhile, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra has received some notable upgrades, while pricing for all three phones has been increased compared to their predecessors.

This week on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, host Pranav Hegde talks to Senior Reviewer Sheldon Pinto and Reviews Editor Roydon Cerejo to learn more about Samsung's latest and greatest smartphones. Are these the best Samsung phones you can buy in 2023?

The Samsung Galaxy S23 is the cheapest of the three Samsung flagship phones and along with the Galaxy S23+, both phones are priced under the Rs. 1 lakh mark. These phones are equipped with a custom version of Qualcomm's best smartphone chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy. The chip promises improved performance over phones equipped with the generic model. At the moment, the iQoo 11 5G is the only other phone with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC under the hood available in India.

While the high-end Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is also powered by this custom chipset, it also features some notable upgrades over its predecessor. These include a 200-megapixel camera sensor, which means the camera now combines 16 pixels into individual pixels to generate a 12.5-megapixel image. We haven't had the opportunity to test these upgrades, but make sure to read our upcoming review of the handset.

Samsung Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23+ First Impressions: More of the Same

This year, Samsung has focused on the camera performance of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. This means that the upgrades coming in terms of camera quality and AI enhancements for the Samsung Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S23+ are mainly down to the chipset. On the other hand, the improved hardware on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra allows for better performance while recording videos at night, or features like Space Zoom and Astrophotography, according to Samsung.

While pricing for all three models is higher than last year's models that debuted exactly one year ago, Samsung has also cut the price of the vanilla Samsung Galaxy S22, the most affordable handset of the Galaxy S22 series. The phone is now priced around Rs. 58,000, which is significantly lower than its launch price of around Rs. 73,000 last February. While it does have powerful specifications, should you be considering the older model, or should you wait for other alternatives?

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra First Impressions: Big Upgrades in a Familiar Package

It's worth noting that the Samsung Galaxy S23 is only the second smartphone series to debut with the latest flagship Qualcomm chipset under the hood, and while it may end up being faster than the iQoo 11 5G, it is only February and this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC 2023) is set to begin on February 27. We're expecting to see several other flagship phones offer a lot of competition to Samsung's flagship phones for 2023.

You can listen to all of that in detail and more in our episode by hitting the play button on the Spotify player embedded above.

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