Samsung Galaxy S23 unboxed – what to expect

Samsung’s first Unpacked event for 2023 is fast approaching and despite the myriad of leaks that have taken most of our curiosity away, it’s still one of the biggest events of the year. So let’s sum up all the leaks to get a better idea of ​​what we’re expecting.

Galaxy S23 Series

We’ll see the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, as well as the S23 and S23+, and likely new laptops. We’re very unlikely to see any new tablets, and extremely unlikely for smartwatch and headphone announcements.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra will continue the design of its predecessor, but it will be available in new colors, such as Cotton Flower (the light yellow) and Botanic Green (a different shade of green from last year).

The Ultra will still have a built-in S Pen, a premium 6.8-inch display, a 5,000mAh battery with 45W charging, and a quad-camera setup on the back.

Among the big changes is the new chipset, which is a higher clocked variant of the SD 8 Gen 2, called Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. Samsung will ship its new flagship phones exclusively with Qualcomm’s chip, which is a 4nm unit built on TSMC’s latest power-efficient process. It should both deliver the best possible performance and manage to squeeze more endurance from the 5,000mAh battery.

The other big change will be the main camera – a newly announced 200MP ISOCELL HP2 sensor. It will provide different output resolutions, depending on your needs – 16:1 for 2.4μm pixels at 12.5MP or 4:1 for 1.2μm pixels at 50MP. It will also allow 8K video capture.

The new sensor will lead to improved Night mode images and better portrait videos, among other things.

The other two cameras on the back will retain the 3x and 10x specs of their predecessors, even down to the sensors, but Samsung will surely make incremental improvements in image quality. The ultra-wide camera will still be an autofocus 12MP but will get a new imager behind the lens. The Galaxy S23 Ultra will also be capable of 100X Space Zoom and Moon Shot.

Finally, there is talk of a new selfie camera but all we know is that it won’t be a high resolution sensor like the 40MP in the Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Speculative rumors have suggested that Samsung will bring emergency satellite connectivity to the Galaxy S23 series, but that seems unlikely at this point.

The other two phones will be even more progressive in their changes compared to their predecessors. The Galaxy S23 and S23+ will retain their 6.1-inch and 6.6-inch resolutions, but get a 200mAh boost in their battery capacities to 3,900mAh and 4,700mAh each. The plus model will have faster 45W charging, compared to just 25W on the vanilla S23.

The S23 and S23+ will also have access to the faster Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset for Galaxy. The back panel will once again be glass (likely Corning of sorts) and the pair will come in a new Mystic Lilac color option.

The Three Galaxies

Samsung is expected to start taking orders for the Galaxy S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra from February 1. If you live in the United States, prices will remain unchanged from last year. The Galaxy S23 Ultra will start at $1,200, the S23+ at $1,000, and the S23 at $800. European buyers, however, will have to accept a price increase. The Galaxy S23 will start at €100 more than its predecessor, while the S23+ will cost €150 more – that’s for the corresponding base configurations.

The base Galaxy S23 Ultra will cost €150 more than the base Galaxy S22 Ultra, but there are differences in the configurations – the new base model of the phone is 8/256 GB, while the old one started at 8/128 GB.

Galaxy Book3 Series

The other major announcement from the Unpacked 2023 event will be the Galaxy Book3 laptop series. They will include the Galaxy Book3 360, Galaxy Book3 Pro, Galaxy Book3 Pro 360, and the top-of-the-line Book3 Ultra.

All three models will have 2880x1800px (16:10) Super AMOLED touchscreens, backlit keyboards, 13th Gen Intel processors, enabling two Thunderbolt 4 ports and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. The laptops will also have a USB-A port, an HDMI port, an audio jack, and a microSD slot.

In terms of size, Galaxy Book3 360 is 14 inches, Galaxy Book3 Pro has 14-inch and 16-inch variants, while Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 is 16-inch. All models will have a choice of Core i5-1340P and Core i7-1360P and will have 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to 1TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD. Unsurprisingly, all models will boot Windows 11 with Samsung’s Galaxy ecosystem additions such as Multi Control, Quick Share, Private Share, and Galaxy Notes.

The 14-inch models will have 63WH batteries, while the 16-inch models will have 76WH batteries – all models will come with 65W USB-C PD charging straight from the box.

The Galaxy Book3 360 will have a 14-inch display with support for an S Pen. The Galaxy Book3 Pro probably won’t support an S Pen, while the Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 will.

Galaxy Book3 360, Galaxy Book3 Pro and Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 laptops

That just leaves the Galaxy Book3 Ultra, which is expected to have a more robust configuration with a 45W Core i9-13900H, Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. It will have a 76WH battery with 136W charging (due to the power-hungry GPU).

We’ll naturally be covering the Samsung Unpacked event, so be sure to stick around for February 1st. The stream begins at 6:00 p.m. GMT.