Samsung’s FE series has always been a fan favourite since the first
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE daylight primary camera samples (tap to see full size)
Bokeh without the portrait mode looks very pleasing, and to my surprise, this Samsung smartphone didn’t overdo with saturation levels. The telephoto camera also maintained the same saturation levels but produced slightly softer images.
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE daylight telephoto camera samples (tap to see full size)
This smartphone’s ultrawide camera maintains the colour scheme like the two other rear cameras, but the images tend to distort a lot on the corners, which could be fixed with a future software update.
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE daylight ultra-wide camera samples (tap to see full size)
The smartphone has a 10-megapixel camera for selfies, which clicks pretty detailed images in daylight.
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE selfie camera samples (tap to see full size)
The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE also has a good camera system for nighttime shots. The images take longer to shoot, but OIS helps the user with it, and the shots you get look pretty good. I did notice some noise in the ultrawide shots.
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE nighttime camera samples (tap to see full size)
It uses a 10-megapixel camera with f2.4 for selfies that does an excellent job with daylight, nighttime and portrait shots. It maintains the colour scheme as the other cameras on board, and you will notice that there is some post-processing happening in the background after you click, as it takes a second to show the final image.
The smartphone can shoot up to 8K 24fps with the primary camera; this is a feature that you do not see very often on a smartphone in this price range. I shot multiple handheld 8K videos using this smartphone, and I was impressed with the results I got. The videos were stabilised, had plenty of details and had plenty of dynamic range to play around with if you ever want to edit these videos. It can shoot 4K 60fps videos as well. The front camera, too, can shoot videos at up to 4K 60fps, which is pretty good for content creators.
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Review: Battery and Charging
The 4500mAh battery does a decent job for a light usage day, but as soon as you include gaming and video streaming, with a high refresh rate turned on, the smartphone does not last very long. The Samsung S23 FE lasted 16 hours and 25 minutes in our battery loop test. Considering Samsung does not provide a charger inside the retail package, support for charging would have been appreciated, as 25W charging support is way too slow for 2023. In our testing, the smartphone charged up to 25% in 30 minutes and 65% in an hour, which is way too slow compared to the competition in this price range.
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Review: Performance
Samsung S23 FE uses Samsung’s Exynos 2200 4nm SoC in India and not Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 that the consumers in the US are getting, which is a bummer, at least on paper. We ran all the required benchmarks on the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE, and the results were pretty good. It scored 1,174,800 on AnTuTu v.10.0.10, 1130 single core and 3232 for GeekBench 6. I played Call of Duty & Real Racing 3, which ran just fine with high graphic settings.
The smartphone features the 4nm Exynos 2200 SoC
The frames didn’t drop a lot, and the gameplay was smooth. The smartphone did get a little warm after each gaming session. The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE runs OneUI 5.1 out of the box, which is based on Android 13, and it offers a pretty smooth user experience and does not have a lot of pre-installed apps.
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Review: Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is a smartphone focused on consumers who wish to get the flagship experience but do not want to spend on something like a Samsung Galaxy S23 or S23+. This one lives up to the FE legacy with flagship-level cameras, a good display, decent battery life and a great processor for almost anything you want to do with this smartphone. All this combined does deliver a premium experience, only if you can live with thicker bezels on a smartphone that costs more than 50K in 2023. Considering this smartphone does not have expandable storage, the base 128GB storage variant might not be sufficient for most people and buying the 256GB variant puts this smartphone in the sub 65K price category, which is already very saturated with the likes of OnePlus 11 (Review) with better performance and modern looking curved display.
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