The Galaxy S23 Extremely is Samsung’s newest and best power-house smartphone with a extra spectacular chip, battery and digital camera than its predecessors. However do the enhancements justify such a steep value?

At £1,249 ($1,199/A$1,949), which is £100 greater than final 12 months’s mannequin, it is without doubt one of the costliest non-folding smartphones accessible.

The S23 Extremely is the spitting picture of its predecessor, an especially strong and premium-feeling machine and appears actually good in cream, as pictured. It has the identical super-bright and crisp display screen, identical aluminium body and barely much less curved glass on the edges.

One of many S23 Extremely’s unrivalled options is the fan-favourite S Pen stylus, which was added to the S sequence final 12 months and receives solely minor adjustments. It’s a related story for the software program, with the telephone working Samsung’s One UI 5.1, which is predicated on Android 13. It’s full of helpful options, together with productiveness instruments for the S Pen, and extra customisation choices for the lockscreen.

The brand new telephone will obtain at the very least 5 years of software program updates from launch, together with 4 main Android model updates and month-to-month safety patches. Samsung has dramatically improved the pace and availability of updates for older gadgets over the previous couple of years, which implies most of its high line of telephones made up to now few years are already working One UI 5.1.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 now worldwide

Unusually for Samsung, all Galaxy S23 fashions use the identical high Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip from Qualcomm no matter the place they’re bought. Up to now, most areas, together with the UK and Europe, used Samsung’s personal barely weaker chips, whereas the US used Qualcomm’s.

The brand new chip is due to this fact a much bigger deal to shoppers in Europe, not solely boosting normal and gaming efficiency by as much as 35% however working rather more effectively, staying cooler below heavy workloads and lengthening battery life significantly.

The S23 Extremely lasts greater than 52 hours between prices, making it one of many longest-lasting smartphones I’ve examined alongside Apple’s iPhone 14 Plus. That was with the display screen actively used for greater than six hours and at the very least an hour spent on 5G a day, the remainder of the time on wifi. Heavy gaming classes decreased the battery life, however the telephone survived even the heaviest days of normal utilization with about 30% left within the tank.

I’ve little question nearly three-day battery life is feasible with extra frugal use. Turning off the always-on show provides roughly 10% to the battery life.

Specs

• Foremost display screen: 6.8in QHD+ Dynamic Amoled 2X (500ppi) 120Hz

• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2

• RAM: 8 or 12GB

• Storage: 256, 512GB or 1TB

• Working system: One UI 5.1 based mostly on Android 13

• Digital camera: Quad rear: 200MP, 12MP ultra-wide, 10MP 3x and 10x telephoto; 12MP front-facing

• Connectivity: 5G, USB-C, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, UWB and GNSS

• Water resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)

• Dimensions: 163.4 x 78.1 x 8.9mm

• Weight: 233g

Sustainability

Samsung doesn’t present an anticipated lifespan for the battery but it surely ought to final in extra of 500 full-charge cycles with at the very least 80% of its unique capability.

The telephone is mostly repairable. Display repairs price about £260, whereas the battery is replaceable by authorised service centres. Samsung gives a self-repair programme within the US, however not within the EU or UK. The telephone scores as much as 6 out of 10 on iFixit’s repairability rating.

It comprises recycled materials in 12 elements – double final 12 months’s quantity – together with aluminium, glass and plastic. Samsung gives trade-in and recycling schemes for outdated gadgets. The corporate publishes annual sustainability stories however not affect assessments for particular person merchandise.

Digital camera

There are 4 cameras on the again of the telephone and a very good 12-megapixel selfie digital camera on the high of the display screen.

As with the earlier two Extremely generations, the four-camera array consists of 3x and 10x optical zoom telephoto 10MP modules, that are wonderful and permit a far better vary of zoom than any rival. Photographs as much as 30x zoom look nearly as good as most different telephones handle at lower than 10x. The 12MP ultrawide produces wonderful panorama and structure pictures and is used for Samsung’s excellent macrophotography mode when up shut.

New for this 12 months is a 200MP predominant digital camera, which makes use of the primary of a brand new era of sensors with slightly below double the pixel rely of earlier fashions. By default it makes use of the information from all of the pixels to extend captured mild and element, producing 12MP photos which are a few of the highest accessible throughout a variety of sunshine ranges. The telephone can even shoot at 50MP or the total 200MP, the latter producing enormous picture recordsdata with an incredible quantity of element in vibrant mild. They lack the dynamic vary of 12MP pictures, nevertheless, as they lose a few of the superior processing.

Low-light mode is barely higher general and produces typically nicely uncovered photos, although is required much less because the digital camera gathers extra mild to start out with. The digital camera app is full of superior and enjoyable options, together with a full RAW taking pictures expertise for these seeking to do their very own enhancing and essentially the most succesful video on Android.

Samsung’s portrait pictures, notably at its 3x zoom, is class-leading on pure look and high quality particulars comparable to flyaway hairs.

In contrast with the S21 and S22 Extremely from the final two years, the S23 Extremely gives solely incremental upgrades throughout the whole digital camera system. However that has saved it essentially the most succesful digital camera on any smartphone accessible, and is about the one one I might think about to have the ability to exchange the utility of a dSLR or equal with its full vary of optical zoom.

Value

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Extremely prices from £1,249 ($1,199.99/A$1,949) with 256GB of storage.

For comparability, the Galaxy S23 prices £849, the S23+ prices £1,049, the Z Fold 4 prices £1,649, the Google Pixel 7 Professional prices £749 and the iPhone 14 Professional prices £1,099.

Verdict

If ever there was a telephone worthy of the “extremely” moniker, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Extremely is it.

The telephone is unrivalled in measurement, energy, functionality and battery life on Android, whereas its digital camera is extra succesful than another in the marketplace. It is vitally a lot overkill for many, however for individuals who would really like the flexibility to do roughly something with a telephone, the S23 Extremely has the products.

It is stuffed with little enhancements to nearly each facet. Nonetheless, it solely builds on massive leaps made two years in the past and is overshadowed by extra revolutionary folding gadgets. Its very excessive value makes it poor worth subsequent to the Google Pixel 7 Professional, which can’t match the Samsung on each ingredient however comes shut sufficient for £400-£500 much less.

It’s doubtless the most effective Android telephone accessible. Whether or not that’s sufficient to be a success at this value any extra, I’m undecided.

Professionals: very massive 120Hz display screen, brilliantly succesful digital camera with 3x and 10x optical zoom, good software program with 5 years help, quicker fingerprint scanner, S Pen stylus, high efficiency, very lengthy battery life, comprises recycled supplies.

Cons: enormous, heavy, extraordinarily costly, S Pen could also be superfluous function for a lot of.