Is Samsung Starting to be Like Apple? Minimum Innovation and High Prices

Conclusion of information which I find out after the Samsung conference

Published in

TechLife

8 min readFeb 4, 2023

Samsung has had its first big event of the year, quite possibly the biggest, as it can only be surpassed by the summer’s unveiling of flexible phones and watches. Unfortunately for him, what we saw was pretty small. After three years, Samsung resorted to holding a physical event, and that was fine, as we had live speakers and audience applause — just like at Apple in the old days. The event lasted something like an hour, ideally not too boring. Unfortunately, Samsung showed little in that hour.

Great flagship Galaxy S23 series

The Galaxy S23 series is supposed to be the best and biggest in the Android world. But it runs into the same things Apple does with its iPhones 14 and 14 Pro.

The latter at least had the advantage of being able to come with Dynamic Island, which certainly got everyone’s attention at first. Here, Samsung has nothing to deal with with its bullet hole, so it has at least redesigned the photo module of the Galaxy S23 and S23+ models along the lines of last year’s and this year’s Ultra, i.e. the most feature-rich Galaxy S223 Ultra.

It was already clear from earlier information that it was going to be about the cameras. But Samsung has staked everything on just one card — a new 200MPx sensor, which is also only available in the most expensive model, not the base duo, and which replaces the already pretty insane 108MPx resolution.

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked February 2023: Official Replay

The base models have even kept the exact same specs for their cameras, and the company justifies this with more powerful software. So what has Samsung been doing all this year (rhetorical question, since it’s probably been burying its Exynos and debugging the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 For Galaxy chip with Qualcomm)?

It was already clear from earlier reports that it was going to be about cameras. But Samsung has staked everything on just one card — a new 200MPx sensor, which is also only available in the most expensive model, not the base duo, and which replaces the already pretty insane 108MPx resolution.

Because there wasn’t much to introduce, and because Samsung didn’t want to bundle the launch of the S series with the A series so as not to take unnecessary attention away from one, it had to stretch the time somehow. We didn’t get to see the new tablets because their market is declining even faster than the one for mobile phones, so the company won’t be releasing them a year apart.

Galaxy Book3 Ultra: Unveiling | Samsung

So we have seen new computers, which the company is naming as Galaxy Book. And it could all look great, because to some extent these are interesting devices that can equal and surpass the MacBooks in many ways. But they have one single flaw — not only are they not available on the local market, but their distribution is very limited worldwide.

Perhaps it would be better to introduce a new line of refrigerators and washing machines than something that the vast majority of interested people have to let their appetite take over, or travel to the lucky market for computers.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra’s performance isn’t enough for the iPhone 14 Pro

Apple introduced its iPhone 14 and 14 Pro back in September last year. In both cases, these are supposed to be the best smartphones on the market. But which is more powerful?

In some ways, comparing the world of Android to iOS is pointless. The systems are very different and work differently with the hardware they run on, especially in RAM usage, where iPhones make do with little, and Android devices need more.

But if we don’t address these differences, we still have various benchmarks that display a single number that we can easily go off of in terms of which device is more powerful. Usually, this means that the higher the number, the more powerful the device.

Samsung uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform for Galaxy chip, a special chip with a higher clock speed, throughout its Galaxy S23 lineup. Apple has an A15 Bionic chip in its iPhone 14 and an A16 Bionic chip in its iPhone 14 Pro.

Galaxy S23 Ultra: Behind The Scenes of ‘Faith’ by Na Hong-jin | Samsung

According to benchmarks, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip is on par with the A15 Bionic chip in the iPhone 14, at least in multi-core performance, despite being clocked lower. It doesn’t match the performance of the A16 Bionic chip in the 14 Pro Max, though there’s one exception — it does surpass it when it comes to gaming.

The Galaxy S23 series, however, gets its own Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, which is clocked higher than the stock version. The latter is clocked at 3.2GHz, while the Mobile Platform for Galaxy is said to be clocked at 3.36GHz. But we’ll get an accurate picture of the true performance only with more tests and of course, our own.

However, we cannot assume that the most advanced mobile chip of the iPhone will surpass the one in the Galaxy S23 series in performance, which the first tests also show. It scores only 1396 points in the single-core test and 4882 in the multi-core one.

The Galaxy S23 does not have satellite connectivity

It was expected that Samsung would add satellite connectivity to the Galaxy S23 series for emergency communication. However, when the new phones were officially announced, there was no mention of satellite connectivity even though the phones are equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset that supports this communication.

But in an interview with CNET, Samsung CEO TM Roh did talk about satellite connectivity. When asked why the new Galaxy flagships don’t have this feature yet, he replied, “When the timing is right, the infrastructure and technology is ready, then of course we will also actively consider adopting this feature.”

In fact, he said, “it doesn’t seem to be the final and only solution to ensure users’ peace of mind.” But at least the chipset is ready. The company has even partnered with Iridium to access its weather-resistant L-band spectrum through a given constellation of satellites. However, the feature won’t launch until the second half of 2023.

Galaxy S23 Ultra: Behind The Scenes of ‘Behold’ by Sir Ridley Scott | Samsung

Additionally, Qualcomm said that not all devices running Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 can actually use the feature. In fact, smartphones require special hardware to access satellite connectivity, and the Galaxy S23 series may or may not have this required hardware.

Furthermore, it is confirmed that this feature cannot be activated via software alone. On top of this, Google has not added native support for this feature to Android and it will only be introduced with Android 14. So it’s possible that the Galaxy S23 doesn’t have this feature simply because it can’t.

Galaxy S23 Ultra Official Film: Epic Nightography | Samsung

Whatever the case, then, the Galaxy S23 series smartphones won’t be able to compete with the iPhone 14 series in this regard. Apple has already shown with them that it can and does work. It also has plans to bring this connectivity capability to more and more markets.

Considering that Samsung won’t bring satellite connectivity until early 2024 at the earliest with the Galaxy S24 lineup, it may unfortunately give Apple enough room to give it a proper run for its money. Catching up then will certainly be tough.

Samsung has flattened the curvature of the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s display by 30%. Why?

Curved screens have been part of many Samsung phones for years. Often to the chagrin of many customers, it has to be said. And with the S Pen touch pen, curved displays make even less sense.

The Korean giant finally realized this when it significantly flattened the sides of its new top-of-the-line “flagship” Galaxy S23 Ultra. At one point, Samsung fitted almost every flagship phone with a curved display. We probably don’t need to remind you of the drawbacks of such a screen here.

These include mainly annoying reflections on the sides of the display, much harder to find suitable protection and sometimes higher repair costs. A major change came with the Galaxy S20 series, whose models had only a very slight curve on the sides.

The Galaxy S23 has a smaller battery than the two-year-old Galaxy S21

All of the new smartphones are equipped with the latest technologies and offer significantly better performance or improved night-time shooting, among other things, compared to their predecessors. So it may surprise some that the base and “plus” models have smaller batteries than last year’s S21 and S21+.

The Galaxy S23 battery has a capacity of 3900 mAh, which is 100 mAh less than the Galaxy S21. The Galaxy S23+ battery also has 100 mAh less capacity compared to the Galaxy S21+ — 4700 mAh. However, compared to last year’s models, the capacity has increased slightly, namely by 200 mAh.

There’s no change to the S23 Ultra, so it still has the same 5000mAh battery as its predecessors. But if you’re considering the Galaxy S23 or Galaxy S23+, don’t let this comparison put you off. Compared to its predecessors from last year, they represent a big generational leap, especially in terms of performance and energy efficiency.

Thanks to their much better power efficiency, you can count on their battery life to be at least comparable to, if not better than, the Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21+ (not to mention the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+).

One More Thing

We got one surprise when representatives from Samsung, Google and Qualcomm spoke side-by-side at the end of the event and mentioned preparations for hardware and software designed for augmented and virtual reality. It’s nothing more than talk, though, for now. Even Google itself can put together an engaging video.

From an Apple perspective, this is clearly polished misery. It looks nice, it’s nicely photographed and presented, but it’s the same thing, in the same body, and only a few things have improved, where at first glance you can only name two — the chip (which has great potential) and the camera. But not to fault Samsung too much, Apple actually had it with the iPhones 14 as well.

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