Enlarge / The base-model Galaxy S23, which has a new camera design.
Samsung is gearing up to launch the Galaxy S23 soon, with an event already officially scheduled for February 1. Prepping for launch means there are plenty of opportunities for things to leak, and official S23 pictures have landed at WinFuture.
The pictures are right in line with the renders from OnLeaks shared several months ago. This year the Galaxy S line is picking up camera design queues from the Ultra model, going with individual camera lenses rather than a big corner camera block. We also get a look at the sides, which are still nicely rounded and should be a bit more comfortable to hold than flat-sided devices. WinFuture’s pictures are technically of the base model S23, though the S23 Plus should look identical. WinFuture says the available colors are “‘Phantom Black’ (black), ‘Botanic Green’ (green), ‘Mystic Lilac’ (pink/purple) and ‘Cotton Flower’ (white).”
The S23 Ultra is expected to look just like the S22 Ultra. That means it separates itself from the base model’s rounded-corner design and is instead an aggressively rectangular slab of glass, with flat edges on the top and bottom. The flat edges and hard corners give it more room to stow an S-Pen, which is the big addition to the more premium model.
As usual, the S23 line will come with spec upgrades. In the US, the phone will ship with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. Globally, Samsung often ships Exynos to some regions, but the phone division has had a rocky relationship with Samsung’s chip division over the poor performance of Samsung’s in-house system-on-chip line. For the S22, the UK and Europe got the Exynos 2200. This year, that’s going to change, and that info is from a really good source: Qualcomm’s chief financial officer.
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Enlarge / The side! At the top edge, you can see the rounded profile the entire band should have.
In Qualcomm’s last earnings call, the company said it “entered into a new multiyear agreement with Samsung, expanding the use of Snapdragon platforms for future premium Samsung Galaxy products globally.” Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala added that agreement meant “our share from 75% in [Galaxy] S22 goes up to global share in G S23.” What exactly “global share” means is up for interpretation, but there’s a good chance it means a 100 percent share of S23 devices, and flagship Exynos smartphones are dead.
For going all-in on Snapdragon, Samsung might get special treatment from Qualcomm. Samsung wasn’t on the list of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 launch partners, which might be because it’s getting a special, higher-clocked edition of the chip.
Megapixels don’t matter regarding camera quality but don’t tell that to the S23 Ultra, which is expected to ship with a 200 MP main camera this year. The default mode will probably include “pixel binning” or merging multiple blocks of pixels, so the output likely won’t be a 200 MP image. Samsung has a couple of 200 MP sensor models floating around out there, so which one it will be isn’t clear.
Another rumor says the minimum base storage will get a nice bump to 256GB, which would be pretty sweet. Check back on February 1.