Samsung has announced the Galaxy S23 series. The S23 Ultra, the most expensive new phone, will be released immediately with a suggested retail price of 1399 euros for the cheapest version. The S23+ costs 1199 euros, the S23 should cost at least 949 euros.
This means that the prices for the S23 phones are 150 to 200 euros higher than for the predecessors in the S22 series. Why that is, Samsung does not say. The S23 series are the first Galaxy S phones to appear since inflation rose sharply after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent rising prices for energy, among other things.
Samsung claims that the packaging is made entirely of recyclable materials. It also claims that the phones are made from an average of 22 percent recycled materials, more than previous models. In addition, the phones meet the UL 110 standard for an Ecologo label. Those standards are outdated and, moreover, not strict. For example, the LG G6 from years ago already met that standard. The standards concern, among other things, the packaging and availability of spare parts.
Just like with its predecessors, the manufacturer promises four years of upgrades and five years of security updates. Samsung also claims improvements in in-camera optical image stabilization, 8K video recording with a wider angle of view, better people rendering thanks to more advanced image recognition in videos and 360-degree audio recording with the Buds2 Pro. The Ultra gets a new primary 200-megapixel sensor, which the manufacturer recently presented.
The phones will receive the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy, which according to our tests has a higher clock speed for the CPU and GPU compared to the standard version: the CPU reaches 3.36GHz instead of 3.2GHz, the GPU goes up to 719MHz instead of 680MHz. Samsung has not tinkered much with the screens and other elements.
The Galaxy S23 models will be released immediately on Wednesday. The cheapest S23 costs 949 euros, the + version costs from 1199 euros. For that price, customers do get the 256GB model, where there was a 128GB variant last year. The Ultra costs from 1399 euros. The battery life of the S23 models is a lot better, according to the review of the Galaxy S23 and S23+ and the separate review of the S23 Ultra.
