Samsung’s Galaxy S23 and S23+ challenge Google’s Pixel for the camera crown

Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S23 and S23+ smartphones during its February 1st Unpacked keynote in San Francisco, California. The company also unveiled the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which you can learn more about here.

The new smartphones sport a slightly updated design that ditches the single camera bump for individual raised lenses, still in the typical vertical line layout — Samsung calls this layout ‘Contour Cut.’ If you’ve paid much attention to the leaks leading up to Samsung’s reveal, then the S23 and S23+ should hardly come as a surprise. Moreover, the phones come in ‘Phantom Black,’ ‘Cream,’ ‘Green’ and ‘Lavender’ colour options.

The phones sport 6.1-inch and 6.6-inch screens, respectively, using Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 — the first smartphones to do so. The devices sport an ‘Intelligent Display’ feature that automatically adjusts and enhances colour and contrast to match three different ambient lighting conditions.

They also run on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset, with Samsung touting the devices’ gaming prowess.When it comes to battery life, Samsung says it increased the battery by 200mAh on both the S23 and S23+. That means the phones boast 3,900mAh and 4,700mAh cells, respectively.

Samsung talked a big game about the camera in the Galaxy S23 Ultra, but the S23 and S23+ didn’t get as significant an improvement. Both phones sport a 50-megapixel wide sensor, 12-megapixel ultra-wide, and 10-megapixel 3x telephoto shooter.

The S23 and S23+ still sport Samsung’s new adaptive pixel Super HDR to capture more detail, improve night photography, image stabilization through adaptive VDIS and Wide OIS, and more.

The company also highlighted improvements to the Expert RAW mode for the S23 and S23+, including support for Astrophoto to capture the night sky (tripod required) and ‘Multiple exposures,’ which lets users layer together multiple frames to create one picture.

Another camera improvement: the S23 and S23+ now sport 12-megapixel selfie cameras, up from 10-megapixels in their predecessors. Samsung says the phones now apply Super HDR to photos taken with the camera, enabling it to capture a more dynamic range of colour.

Samsung says the new Galaxy smartphones were designed with the planet in mind and use a variety of recycled materials, including pre-consumer recycled glass for the front screen and back cover, recycled aluminum, and plastics, including recycled water barrels, fishing nets, and more. The smartphones’ packaging is also made of recycled materials.

In Canada, the Galaxy S23 will cost $1,099.99 for the 128GB model and $1,179.99 for the 256GB model. The Galaxy S23+ will cost $1,399.99 for the 256GB model and $1,559.99 for the 512GB model. The handsets are available for pre-order now and release on February 17th.

For more on Samsung’s Galaxy S23 line, check out our hands-on with the new smartphones and all of our Unpacked 2023 content here.

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