Samsung Galaxy S23: Plans, pricing and specs

Samsung has kicked off another big year of tech launches with its latest flagship, the Samsung Galaxy S23. As with recent years, the Samsung Galaxy S23 family consists of three devices: the standard Samsung Galaxy S23, the larger Galaxy S23 Plus and the premium Galaxy S23 Ultra.  

Samsung’s latest flashy flagship was officially revealed early February, and while most of the rumours and leaks prior to launch nailed the details, there's still a lot to learn about the new devices. 

If you’re after a short and sweet rundown to help determine whether or not it's worth upgrading to the new Galaxy S23, you'll find everything you need to know about the new handset below. First, let's take a look at the plans available for the Samsung Galaxy S23. 

The Galaxy S23 series is more expensive in some spots, and cheaper in others. For instance, the 256GB Galaxy S23 Ultra is $50 cheaper than its 2021 counterpart. However, the 512GB and 1TB versions of the device are more expensive.

Across the range, it pays to expect increases ranging from $100 more for cheaper models, up to $200 more at the top end. See the table below for more details on Galaxy S23 pricing. 

The Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23 Plus and Galaxy S23 Ultra officially went on sale on February 17th, 2023.

Samsung hasn't exactly gone back to the drawing board with the display on this year's Galaxy S23. This year's trio of devices all share a lot of DNA with last year's Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22 Plus and Galaxy S22 Ultra. 

The Galaxy S23 is kitted out with a 6.1-inch display that has both the same resolution and refresh rate as last year's Galaxy S22. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S23 Plus has 6.6-inch display on par with last year's Galaxy S22 Plus. Finally, the high-end Galaxy S23 Ultra has a 6.8-inch screen that's a match for the one found on last year's Galaxy S22 Ultra.

All three models have marginally larger bezels and improved Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for protection. The only noticeable design revision for the Galaxy S23 Ultra is a shift from the curved display in last year's model to a slightly flatter one. 

Battery life is one of the most important specs when it comes to smartphones and while the Galaxy S23 family doesn't mark a huge evolution in that department, there are still some generous gains to be found. 

The Samsung Galaxy S23 boasts a 3900mAh battery. This is larger than the Galaxy S22's 3700mAh battery, but smaller than the battery inside the Samsung Galaxy S21.

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus battery has increased to 4700mAh from the S22 Plus' 4500mAh. Although a notable improvement, this figure falls short of the 4800mAh battery found in Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Plus.

Finally, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra offers a significantly more sizable 5000mAh battery that’s the same size as the one in last year’s Galaxy S22 Ultra.

But size isn't everything. Samsung claims the performance improvements provided by the Gen 2 Snapdragon 8 processor should help optimise the S23's power consumption, resulting in roughly 20% longer batter life. 

Following from on from the trend set last year, Australians will get the the Gen 2 Snapdragon 8 chipset in the Galaxy S23 series, rather than the Exynos variant from years' past. 

There are decent performance gains offered by the Gen 2 Snapdragon 8, especially for mobile gaming. Qualcomm has made some notable claims about the improvements, suggesting a 25% increase to GPU performance and a 40% increase to overall power efficiency, when compared to the Gen 1 Snapdragon 8. These improvements will touch almost every part of the overall experience but will be most noticeable for mobile gamers. 

Stop me if you've heard this one before: This year's Galaxy S23 Ultra camera features even more megapixels. 200MP to be exact; a sizeable increase to the S22 Ultra's 108MP main shooter. However, as we all know, more megapixels doesn't always result in better photos, there are many more important factors that are easy to bungle, like autofocus. With all that said, our early tests with the S23 Ultra camera delivered some promising results. This seems to be down to the improvements made to Samsung's AI image processing (aided by the Gen 2 Snapdragon 8) and the way that the ToF (Time of Flight) sensor and autofocus are integrated this time around.

The most noticeable improvement to photography in the S23 series can be found in the upgraded selfie camera. Every model gets faster auto-focus which results in much cleaner selfies, especially in low-light environments. The S23 Ultra gets a similar improvement with its 12MP selfie camera with dual-pixel, super-fast autofocus.