Samsung Galaxy S23 is official, with special-edition Qualcomm chip
The S23 Series. Everything has a similar camera design this year. [credit: Samsung ]
It's a new year, and that means it's time for a new Samsung flagship. The Galaxy S23 series is official, with a tweaked design for the cheaper models and a big SoC change for international users. As always, there are three models: the 6.1-inch Galaxy S23, 6.6-inch S23 Plus, and 6.8-inch S23 Ultra.
With the release of the S23, Samsung is kicking off some internal drama, with Samsung's Galaxy phone "DX Division" spurning Samsung LSI-the division that produces Exynos chips-for not being good enough. In the past, the Galaxy S series has gone with dual suppliers for its SoC, where some regions get Qualcomm Snapdragon chips (usually the US, China, Japan, and Latin America) and others get Samsung Exynos chips (Europe, India, among others). The performance of Exynos chips is usually not up to the (second place) standard of Qualcomm, and Exynos customers who get stuck with a purely inferior phone are naturally disappointed. Exynos chips have made Samsung fans angry enough to make petitions begging for the superior Qualcomm model to be released in their markets.
This year, Samsung is listening and will be going all Qualcomm, all the time. The Exynos chips have been banished to lower-end devices, which is a wild turn of events after Samsung LSI scored an AMD collaboration last year and two years ago-perhaps out of desperation-started naming Exynos chips after Galaxy S phones, with the Exynos 2100 launching in the S21, and the Exynos 2200 launching in the S22. The Exynos division still supplies chips to various mid-range Samsung phones, and an orphaned Exynos 2300 chip is still floating around the rumor mill and might end up in a tablet or a cut-down version of the S23.