What to expect from Samsung's February Unpacked event
The Galaxy S23 lineup might not be the only big news.
Samsung is holding its first Unpacked event of 2023 on February 1st, and many expect the Galaxy S23 family to be the centerpiece. The company has even teased a few details, such as camera and performance upgrades. But will this phone lineup be a major revision, or a modest yearly refresh? Let’s take a look at what you’re likely to see when Samsung takes to the stage in San Francisco.
Galaxy S23 Ultra
If the Galaxy S22 Ultra’s main appeal was its Note-style pen functionality, the S23 Ultra may revolve around its camera system. Rumors from leaker Ice Universe and others have long pointed to the highest-end S23 model sporting a 200-megapixel main camera, and Samsung added fuel to the discussion by unveiling a sensor that could fit the bill. The ISOCELL HP2 promises extremely detailed photos and 8K video at 30 frames per second while still offering solid low-light capabilities. It might also capture more accurate colors in brightly-lit scenarios. The front camera may get a slight bump to 12MP as well.
It won’t surprise you to hear that Samsung is poised to give the S23 family a speed boost with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. It’s supposedly over 25 percent faster than Gen 1 while offering hardware-accelerated ray tracing for more realistic lighting in games. You may see up to a fourfold improvement in AI processing, too. Qualcomm claims Gen 2 is up to 40 percent more energy efficient, and you might get emergency satellite communication in addition to WiFi 7 networking.
However, the biggest shock may be where you find that chip. Well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims Samsung will use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 to power the Galaxy S23 in every country, rather than using its in-house Exynos chips in regions like Asia and Europe. Critics have routinely knocked Exynos-based Galaxy phones for having worse performance and battery life than their Snapdragon counterparts, but that might not be an issue this time around.
You may not see other sweeping changes, but that’s not necessarily a problem. If leaked images at Nieuwe Mobiel are accurate, the Galaxy S23 Ultra will have a slightly flatter design than its predecessor, addressing complaints about the 6.8-inch screen’s curved edges. You’d still find a 12MP ultra-wide camera, dual 10MP telephoto lenses, an S-Pen and up to 12GB of RAM. You may get a 1TB storage option, though, so you might not have to worry as much about that 8K footage chewing up all your free space.
Galaxy S23 and S23+
Samsung’s more mainstream smartphones aren’t expected to receive as dramatic an update, but there could still be meaningful improvements. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and the rumored 12MP front camera might arrive alongside an ever-so-slightly larger battery. The phones could also ship with 256GB of storage as the baseline — important if you’d rather not spend extra just to hold a sizable media collection.
Otherwise we’ll probably get the familiar 6.1- and 6.6-inch displays of the Galaxy S22 line, not to mention a 50MP main rear camera, a 12MP ultra-wide and a lone 10MP telephoto. Leaked pictures at Nieuwe Mobiel suggest Samsung is redesigning the camera array to look more like that of the Ultra family, so the conspicuous camera hump of the S21 and S22 may vanish.