The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is good but arrived at the wrong time

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Cons

Our Verdict

You can’t argue with the Galaxy S23 FE as a proposition. It sports many of the key features of a flagship phone – not least a dedicated telephoto camera and wireless charging – but for a lower price. However, it’s a little unwieldy, and the timing of its arrival is far from ideal.

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Samsung released the Galaxy S23 FE, its more affordable alternative to the Galaxy S23, right at the end of 2023. It was a bit of a curious decision with the Galaxy S24 mere months away, while at the time of writing, now we have a review sample, the mid-range Galaxy A55 is upon us.

There’s clearly still a gap in the market for a phone like the Galaxy S23 FE (fan edition), offering specs that vaguely approximate a flagship for a lesser price. But the competition in the £/$500 to £/$600 price category is a strong and varied bunch.

With decent performance, a vibrant display, and flagship features like wireless charging and a dedicated telephoto camera, the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE still has a lot to offer. There are question marks concerning whether it’s enough, however.

Design & Build

As befits its name, Samsung has broadly stuck to the Galaxy S23’s design language with the Galaxy S23 FE. It’s bigger, bulkier, and generally less refined, but it otherwise looks very similar.

Indeed, at 158 x 76.5 x 8.2mm and weighing 209g, the Galaxy S23 FE is bigger and heavier than even the Galaxy S23 Plus. From a design perspective, the Galaxy S23 FE is simply less wieldy than its brothers.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

It’s good to see that Samsung hasn’t been tempted to revert to plastic with the S23 FE. You’re still getting glass (though Gorilla Glass 5 rather than Victus 2) to the front and back, together with an aluminium frame. The latter isn’t the Galaxy S23’s Armour Aluminium, though, so it’s not as tough.

Said aluminium frame is slightly curved but with a pronounced edge that runs perfectly flush with the display and rear glass panel. I can only speak anecdotally here, but there are signs that it’s somewhat prone to cosmetic damage, and not merely because the frame’s shape and smooth finish make it feel a little slippery.

I noted a ding on the corner of the handset early on in my time with the phone. I initially assumed this was from whoever had been testing the phone prior to me, as I hadn’t dropped or clattered the phone during the day or two I had spent with the phone up to that point.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Subsequently, however, the phone did suffer a minor spill (I’m not sure it even qualified as a drop) onto a wooden desk from no higher than a foot in the air, after which I found a couple of fresh albeit small marks on the frame. Was that first ding a pre-existing condition after all, or is the Galaxy S23 FE frame particularly prone to nicks and scrapes?

It’s impossible to call it either way with any certainty, but I’d certainly be thinking about investing in a case if this was my phone.

Otherwise, the most notable concession to price in the Galaxy S23 FE’s design is its chunky bezels and an especially large chin. Conversely, you still get a full IP68 dust and water resistance rating, which isn’t a given at this price. The Nothing Phone (2) only supplies an IP54 rating, for example.

Screen & Speakers

The Galaxy S23 FE’s display occupies the middle ground in the range at 6.4in. It’s a nice size, offering an ample but not overwhelming canvas.

Samsung is a dab hand with AMOLED technology by this point, and the Galaxy S23 FE outputs vibrant colour. You might want to reign those in a little by switching to the Natural screen mode, though the default Vivid look clearly has its fans.

Even in the more restrained Natural mode, this isn’t strictly the most colour accurate display I’ve seen, even at this price. With a 98.6% sRGB gamut coverage and an average Delta E of 1.94, it’s far from bad, but ‘punched up’ is definitely a phrase that springs to mind.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

The screen’s 1080 x 2340 resolution, together with a smooth 120Hz peak refresh rate, places it right up there with the rest of the S23 range, though a stated 1450 nits peak brightness drops it a little short. You still get support for HDR10+ content, though.

With autobrightness turned off, I found the top brightness setting to be a pretty meagre 394 nits. It’s comfortable to look at even when you’re indoors, whereas most true flagships will need dropping down for a comfortable low-light viewing experience.

It’s a shame Samsung has opted for a shiny hole-punch selfie camera mounting. It’s distracting, and it also resembles the approach taken with cheaper phones.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

All-in-all, this is a reasonably decent display for the money, though the similarly priced Nothing Phone (2) display gets slightly brighter, and is a more advanced LTPO panel to adjust the refresh rate down to 1Hz to save power.

For the Galaxy S23 FE’s audio output, Samsung supplies a solid set of stereo speakers; one on the bottom edge of the phone, and one in the earpiece. They get extremely loud between them, though the piercing highs and insubstantial lows can make straying much beyond two-thirds volume somewhat uncomfortable on the ears.

Specs & Performance

Samsung has rolled back much of the good work it did with the initial Galaxy S23 range by reverting to its own custom silicon. Where every other model went with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the Galaxy S23 FE runs on the Exynos 2200 from the S22+ and S22 Ultra.

It’s a flat-out inferior chip, producing way lower CPU and GPU benchmark scores. In fact, it scores far closer to (and indeed slightly behind) the Nothing Phone (2) with its Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.

Taken in isolation, however, there’s little to complain about with the Galaxy S23 FE’s real-world performance. Jumping between apps, double tapping the power button to jump into the camera app, unlocking using the in-display fingerprint sensor, and loading up web pages all motor along in a very ‘flagship’ fashion.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Where I noticed that the Galaxy S23 FE wasn’t operating at the top of its game was when booting up Genshin Impact. It’ll run in High graphical settings, but not as smoothly as an out-and-out flagship phone from 2024 or even 2023.

The memory and storage options are exactly the same as the Galaxy S23, which means 8GB of RAM and either 128- or 256GB of internal capacity. There’s no microSD slot to expand that latter spec, so choose carefully.

Samsung Galaxy S23 FE benchmarks

Cameras

Samsung has equipped the Galaxy S23 FE with a slightly scaled back camera system compared to the Galaxy S23. The main 50Mp camera and the 12Mp ultra-wide appear to be the same, but there’s a slightly lesser 8Mp 3x telephoto camera in the FE.

Even so, that shouldn’t take away from the fact that Samsung is offering a proper triple camera system here. That’s far from common in anything less than an outright flagship, as the iPhone 15 and the Pixel 8 go to show.

The main deal is that 50Mp shooter, of course, and it takes very solid shots in a range of lighting conditions. It’s not the newest or greatest sensor, but Samsung’s punchy processing ensures that you get consistently well-exposed, nicely detailed shots.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Samsung’s famous colour pop and image processing accentuates scenery and food pictures nicely, while night shots are crisp and clear, if perhaps a little over-brightened. You won’t need to manually switch to a dedicated Night mode either, thanks to Samsung’s smart camera AI.

The 12Mp ultra-wide obviously can’t match the main sensor for detail or clear exposure, but it’s still decent. One thing Samsung has always done well is supply an even colour tone across all of its cameras, and that’s certainly the case here.

That applies, too, to the 8Mp 3x telephoto. While its level of detail falls even lower when you look closely, it still offers a notable improvement over the cropped zooms of its similarly priced rivals, aided no doubt by the provision of OIS support.

Another thing Samsung tends to do well is selfies, and the Galaxy S23 FE’s 10Mp front camera acquits itself well, despite technically being a step down from the Galaxy S23’s 12Mp example. Again, Samsung’s image processing is doing some heavy lifting here, but it ensures warm colours and a well-distinguished subject.

With a slightly wider shooting angle, you can also opt for two levels of framing depending on whether you’re after a solo or group shot.

Battery Life & Charging

With a much bigger body, Samsung has been able to fit the Galaxy S23 FE with a 4500mAh battery. That’s not massive in general Android phone terms, but it’s much bigger than the Galaxy S23’s 3900mAh, and only a little smaller than the Galaxy S23+‘s 4700mAh cell.

In my experience, this was sufficient to get through a day of light to moderate usage (around 3 hours of screen on time) with around half a tankful remaining. It should see you through to bedtime on even a more intensive day of usage.

It didn’t fare so well in the PC Mark Work 3.0 battery test, which simulates a phone working under an extended mixed workload at 200 nits. At 10 hours and 2 minutes, it fell more than four hours short of the Nothing Phone (2), and about 45 minutes short of the Pixel 8 and Pixel 7a.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

There’s a 25W wired charging support but, just like with other Galaxy phones, you’ll need to supply the charger yourself. Using an appropriate Samsung charger, I recorded the FE getting to 55% in 30 minutes.

It also supports 15W wireless charging, which is always welcome (though not unique) in a phone of this price.

Software & Apps

At the time of writing, the Galaxy S23 FE has received its Android 14 update, and is running Samsung’s custom One UI 6 on top.

Samsung doesn’t exactly treat Android with kid’s gloves like, say, Motorola or Asus. It has its own distinct approach to software and it doesn’t hold back in applying it.

Thankfully, Samsung’s experience as one of the original Android manufacturers means that its UI is as mature as anyone else’s. This means that it’s dependable, polished, and reasonably fluid. This maturity and consistency also means that Samsung has persisted with its own approach where others (not least Google itself) have long since diverged.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

The app tray sports a curious lateral scrolling layout with no sense of alphabetical order; virtual navigation buttons are taken as the default; and staple apps like Google Wallet and Google Calendar need to be manually downloaded from the Google Play Store.

Samsung has arguably earned the right to do things its own way – for many millions of people, the Samsung way is the Android way, after all. But for someone well versed in Google’s UI philosophy, it all feels a bit cluttered, as evidenced by One UI’s extremely busy notification/shortcut pane, or the provision of duplicate web browsers and app stores.

The less said about Bixby, Samsung’s all-but-sidelined personal assistant, the better.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Cut through the clutter, however, and One UI on the Galaxy S23 FE remains fast, fluid, and eminently customisable.

Like the rest of the Galaxy S23 range, Samsung is offering a decent software support assurance, involving four years of OS updates (including Android 14) and five years of security updates. It might feel like it came to market a little later than it should have, but Samsung is committed to supporting the Galaxy S23 FE for the long haul.

Price & Availability

With an RRP starting from £599/$579.99 for 128GB of internal storage, moving up to £649/$639.99 for 256GB, the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE occupies a position to the north of the mid-range market.

As a result, it finds itself squeezed by strong competition from the mid-range to one side and discounted ‘affordable flagships to the other. For one thing, the price of the Galaxy S23 itself has dropped to £699 in the wake of the Galaxy S24 launch, and that’s even before you factor in the discounts that crop up for such older phones.

Then there’s the Nothing Phone (2) with its similar starting price, the Pixel 8 for £100 more, and the OnePlus Nord 3 for £100 less.

One of the advantages of Samsung phones is their wide availability. You can buy the Galaxy S23 FE direct from the manufacturer’s website, of course, but also Amazon, Currys, AO and pretty much every other major phone retailer.

Find out which handset we rank as the best mid-range phones.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE?

The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is a solid smartphone that offers a broadly flagship-like experience for a less-than-flagship price. Its performance, display, and camera system aren’t anywhere near top of the pile, but they’re still decent for the money.

Its dedicated 3x telephoto camera is a real boon at this price point, offering a welcome distinguishing factor compared to the Nothing Phone (2) and even the more expensive Pixel 8. Conversely, neither the S23 FE’s hardware design nor its software are as appealing as those aforementioned rivals.

There’s definitely a timing issue here, with the Galaxy S23 FE rapidly feeling somewhat outdated within Samsung’s range, especially with the older but flat-out-better Galaxy S23 now being heavily discounted.

Even so, with decent software support and a comprehensive feature set that includes things like wireless charging and IP68 certification, it remains a safe bet.

Specs