Samsung Galaxy S23 FE review: For casual users on carriers and few others

After skipping a release last year, Samsung's Fan Edition line of upper midrange Galaxy phones returns, along with a tablet and earbuds, with the S23 FE. At $600, the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is a pretty good deal for Americans who can either get $100 slashed off the price from select carriers or can get it free outright from carriers with a contract. I single out "for Americans" because the users in the U.S. buy through carriers more than in other regions. The market is also more limited, missing the bulk of Chinese options that are known for their bang-for-buck value.

The Galaxy S23 FE totally makes sense for the average American consumer walking into a T-Mobile or Verizon store looking for a new Android phone that looks good and doesn't cost much. But for people in Asia or Europe who are more likely to buy phones outright and have significantly more options, the S23 FE's asking price is a bit high, especially since you can find a standard flagship S23 at just $60-80 more. There are also midrangers from Xiaomi or Realme that offer faster refresh rates, more powerful chips, and newer camera sensors for less money. But stateside, and perhaps in its native South Korea, this phone still has appeal for a certain subset of users.

About this review: Samsung sent XDA a Galaxy S23 FE for review. Samsung did not have input in this article.

Pricing and availability

The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is available for purchase now at retailers and carriers worldwide. In the U.S., the S23 FE is available on Amazon, Best Buy, and all carriers. On Best Buy and Amazon, the phone is priced at $599 for the base 128GB model or $659 for double the storage, and there's a $100 gift card offer with the purchase. At select carriers, you can get the phone free with a two-year contract or buy it unlocked for $630.

Design and hardware

Minimal design that could look clean or bland

The Galaxy S23 FE continues the design language first established by the Galaxy S22 Ultra and then adopted across the entire S23 series this year. It looks quite minimal, with two sheets of flat glass sandwiching an aluminum frame and camera lenses that stand on their own without the usual camera module/island on virtually all other smartphones. Whether this design looks clean or bland depends on your view, but we can't deny that it looks like a Samsung phone.

Personally, I think this minimalist design goes better with the matte, boxy shape of the S22/23 Ultra, with the pointy corners harkening back to the towering monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. With the rounded corners and the glossy purple finish, it looks a bit toy-like.

The aluminum frame is wide but not flat like an iPhone; there's a subtle outward curve that gives the phone a more rounded feel. However, the edges where the screen and frame meet are sharp and abrupt. This is an issue I also had with the Google Pixel 8 Pro. I'm unsure if it's a design choice or a lack of manufacturing polish. The iPhone 15 Pro and most Chinese phones have a subtle chamfer to soften the edge where the screen meets the frame, but since this is a $600 phone, I won't nitpick too much.

The screen looks great, but it's a tier below the Quad HD offerings used in the mainline S23 phones.

The screen measures 6.4 inches with a thickness of 0.32 inches, so the S23 FE sits between the base model S23 and S23+ in terms of size. The phone is easy to hold, with the glass back feeling grippy, although its glossy finish attracts smudges and fingerprints.

The screen looks great, but it's a tier below the Quad HD offerings used in the mainline S23 phones. It's still a 120Hz panel, and the FHD+ 1080x2340 resolution is still plenty sharp. It is not a high-end LTPO panel, however, and the pulse width modulation (PWM) is low, which means a small percentage of people might see more flickering in low brightness. The 1,450-nit peak brightness is also more than acceptable. To most people, this screen will look great; only the super techie would be able to nitpick that the refresh rate range is low and that the bezels wrapping the screen are slightly thick by late 2023 standards.

Inside are slightly old components. The phone's powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which is technically two generations old. However, Samsung deserves credit for thermals because the S23 FE can finish a 20-minute WildLife Extreme Stress Test from the app 3DMark, which most Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 flagships notoriously could not back in early 2022.

The storage is also UFS 3.1 instead of UFS 4.0, and that, paired with just 8GB of RAM, means this phone isn't fast. It's not slow exactly, but everything from unlocking the phone using the fingerprint scanner to opening an app that had been sitting in the background takes a beat longer to open than it should. And I'm not making this comparison just against $1,000 flagships, but even the one-year-old OnePlus 10T or the recently launched Pixel 8 are a tad faster and within its price range.

In better news, there are stereo speakers that produce decent sound, and the phone offers a 4,500mAh battery with 25W wireless charging and IP68 water and dust resistance.

Cameras

Good photos... if you can hold still

The S23 FE's main camera and ultrawide cameras are identical to the sensors used in the flagship Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus (not the Ultra, however, which uses better lenses), so these are capable cameras, and especially with the main camera, near flagship quality. The main camera's f/1.8 aperture and 1/1.56-inch image sensor size aren't going to win any awards, but Samsung's image processing is mature and, most importantly, confident. Samsung has always gone for bolder color output and brighter exposures, and it's the same story here. During the day, the main camera produces shots with superb dynamic range and detail.

Samsung uses night mode and dials down the shutter speed very liberally in dark lighting, so you'll need to hold still. You'll likely see motion blur if there are moving objects in the shot, but if you're shooting a stationary scene and hold still for a second, you can still produce a great-looking shot.

Meanwhile, the ultrawide is solid, but like most phones, you see a lot of detail loss in low-light conditions.

I am mostly impressed by the telephoto lens. It's just an 8MP shooter, so the hardware is a bit behind what Samsung uses in its premium phones, but it still produces 75mm images with natural bokeh and good background compression.

The 10MP front-facing camera is fine, though I find Samsung's processing to be slightly less natural than Apple or Google's. There always appears to be a bit of skin smoothening, even when I don't have beauty filters on. But it can record video at up to 4K and 60FPS, so it's a bit of a tradeoff.

Software and performance

Excellent multitasking system and improved thermals

For an average consumer, the Galaxy S23 FE is a fine performer, and I don't think most people will have complaints. The phone runs on Android 13 with Samsung's OneUI on top, and everything works as it should. Haptics are solid; stereo speakers get loud; and call quality and cell reception were fine in the U.S. and Hong Kong. There aren't any glaring performance flaws.

Samsung's multitasking system is also among the very best in smartphones.

But for me, a reviewer who's used all the latest phones, I have to nitpick a bit, and I can see that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, 8GB of RAM, and UFS 3.1 storage can be spread a bit thin by heavy workloads. Apps sometimes take a bit longer to load if I have many backlogged or if I switch between the forward-facing camera and the selfie lens. The S23 FE will be absolutely fine for most people whose phone habits are mostly just texting, phone calls, and scrolling through social media or websites.

And as mentioned, this phone actually could survive 3DMark's 20-minute stress test. It doesn't reflect real-world conditions, but it's still impressive for a midrange phone. You can see the benchmark numbers below are respectable. For reference, below is a chart comparing the Galaxy S23 FE numbers to Galaxy S23 Ultra scores.

Samsung's software, One UI, is clean and doesn't get in the way of Android 13. The animations are not the smoothest, but it's customizable, and everything makes sense, without a complicated visual identity getting in the way.

Samsung's multitasking system is also among the very best in smartphones. I can open apps in split-screen mode or in floating windows and shove these windows to the side when not in active use. The entire system is functional and allows me to accomplish productivity tasks with ease.

Battery life has been fine. The Galaxy S23 FE can last a typical day, but on heavier days like weekends when I tend to be out for 12 hours or more, the phone was struggling to make it to the finish line. The slow-ish charging speed relative to other phones I've been using is also an annoyance.

Should you buy the Galaxy S23 FE?

You should buy the Galaxy S23 FE if:

• You want a new Samsung phone that performs well
• You don't want to spend flagship prices
• You want a solid Android phone, and your carrier has enticing deals

You should not buy the Galaxy S23 FE if:

• You are buying this phone outright at full price (the baseline Galaxy S23 with a better SoC and screen is just around $60-$80 more)
• You live in a region where Redmi and Realme sell phones

The Galaxy S23 FE is a really solid option for casual users looking for a phone from a trusted brand with carrier support. For the average Joe who's decided iPhones aren't for them, Samsung is the natural option, and this phone has attractive carrier pricing.

If you're a phone enthusiast (you buy phones outright), I don't think this phone holds much appeal. You'll probably rather go for the similarly priced Google Pixel 8 with more interesting "AI-powered" silicon and Google smarts or just pay a bit more for a flagship. If you are a bargain hunter living in Asia or Europe where Realme or Redmi sells, those brands offer phones with better specs at an even lower price.

But that's alright for Samsung. I think there's enough appeal in the U.S. and South Korea, which are its two major markets, and at carriers.