Samsung Galaxy S23 series first look: beyond the snazz and jazz!

The latest and greatest from Samsung's smartphone factory is finally out. Say hello to the Galaxy S23 series, a flagship trio that serves top-end Android goodness in Ultra, Plus, and regular size for folks dreaming about compact phones. Some of us got tiny hands, y’all!!

Now, things are rather confusing this year. Samsung has given a design makeover to the more affordable models, but the priciest Ultra trim looks almost identical to its predecessor. But when it comes to upgrades, it’s the Ultra model that makes a splash.

Let’s start where things are fresh to the eyeballs and the fickle brain cells of a buyer. The standard Galaxy S23, and its Plus sibling, both rely on Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and Armored Aluminum for their build. Or in human language, the most resilient kind of materials available out there for making a sturdy phone.

Compared to the Galaxy S22 series, these two phones are ever so slightly wider and taller, but the quality is top-notch. I especially love that these phones don’t offer an eyesore of a camera hump at the back.

Samsung borrowed the floating camera lens design from the Galaxy S22 Ultra for its new flagship trio, and I am all for it. The aesthetics aren’t garish, and there are no shiny, contrasty color elements to be seen here, unlike the S21 and S22 series. Don’t get me wrong. Some people with a taste for colorful things in life actually liked that approach.

If you’re a fan of understated looks, there is no flagship out there that can match what the Galaxy S23 has to offer. I’m not really a fan of the Lavendar or the boring Phantom Black trim, but the Cream and Green shades really stand out. This year, Samsung is ditching the pearl white aesthetics, which is a tad disheartening. I really loved it on the Galaxy S22 series, especially the Ultra.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra, on the other hand, wears the same garb as its predecessor. The only difference I could feel was its slightly curved side profile. But goddamn it, this phone is stunning in green. It looks a tad muted indoors, but under natural light, the peppy side of its fresh paint job really comes out.

But these phones are more than just their looks. Samsung got Qualcomm to make a slightly faster version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, which has a prime core ticking at a higher frequency.

Samsung also took care of the gaming nerds by slapping a custom ray-tracing module on the GPU aka the thing handling all things snazzy and demanding on that gorgeous 120Hz OLED screen. Why real-time ray-tracing?

Well, when you play a game, the characters will have the same kind of lighting and shadow reflections on them, as you would see the sunlight casting on a real person. By the way, Samsung says the GPU is over 40% faster, so there’s that. I also heard the company promising a PC-like gaming experience. We’ll test that out soon!

But all that silicon-ey snazz and jazz will also produce more heat. And to keep the phone from melting into a glassy goo, Samsung put in a larger and more efficient vapor chamber cooling system. I wrote a few hundred very technical words about the working, and benefits, of a vapor chamber cooling system here.

Samsung has also bumped up the battery capacity inside the Galaxy S23 and its Plus version, which is extremely welcome. The Galaxy S22’s battery life really gave me some headaches from time to time in the early days, but software updates in the months that followed optimized it to a certain extent.

Wireless charging support is here, and you can even borrow some of that juice to charge your smartwatch or earbuds – without any wire hassle. Take that, Apple! On the software side, Android 13 runs the show, and you will be getting four assured Android OS updates all the way up to 2026. That software policy is even better than what Google serves with Pixel phones. Google is the Lord of Android, by the way!

I’ll be putting these phones to the test soon. From gaming tests to camera analysis of the Galaxy S23 trio, all of it is in the pipeline. Stay tuned for it on Athenil. In the sauciest words, of course!