Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus review: This one is just right

It can be easy to forget that the Galaxy S23 Plus even exists, overshadowed as it is by the more premium and feature-rich Galaxy S23 Ultra. And those looking for a cheaper flagship smartphone might gravitate toward the cute little Galaxy S23. There’s no reason to ignore this phone, though — the S23 Plus shares most of its features with the rest of the S23 family, including an overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, a fantastic OLED screen, and Samsung’s class-leading update guarantee. Most smartphone OEMs don’t have the scale to release three different versions of the same phone, but Samsung does. That means you can play Goldilocks and skip the phone that’s too big, ignore the one that’s too small, and settle in with one that might be just right for you.

Update, September 2023: We’ve updated this review to include the latest software information and alternatives to the Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus.

What you need to know about the Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus

• Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus (8GB/256GB): $999 / £1,049 / €1,219
• Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus (8GB/512GB): $1,119 / £1,149 / €1,339

Launched in early 2023, the Galaxy S23 Plus is the middle child in Samsung’s new family of flagship phones. It’s made of Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the screen and rear panel, with a frame of Samsung’s custom Armor Aluminum alloy. The phone has a 6.6-inch flat OLED screen, slightly smaller than the 6.8-inch curved OLED on the Galaxy S23 Ultra and substantially larger than the 6.1-inch OLED on the base model Galaxy S23. The screen steps down to 1,080 x 2,340 from the 1440p resolution offered by the S23 Ultra, but you still get the same 120Hz adaptive refresh rate (that can drop to 48Hz) and peak brightness at an impressive 1,750 nits. Under the display is the latest Qualcomm ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which can recognize your biometrics without the annoying flash required by optical sensors.

Samsung unified the body style with the Galaxy S23 series, giving all three models the floating camera lenses on the back. The S23 Plus looks like a scaled-up version of the S23, and like the smaller phone, there’s no S Pen support. Samsung was able to boost the battery capacity versus the Galaxy S22 Plus from 4,500mAh to 4,700mAh, while also upping the base storage from 128GB to 256GB. There’s no headphone jack, but what else is new? The only I/O is the bottom-mounted USB-C 3.2 port, with support for up to 45W charging speeds.

One of the most notable changes from the Galaxy S23 Ultra is that the Galaxy S23 Plus doesn’t get that fancy new 200MP camera. It sticks with the same setup as the Galaxy S22 Plus: a 50MP primary, a 10MP 3x telephoto, and a 12MP ultrawide. The S23 Plus does, however, get the same overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip as the S23 Ultra. This is, by most measures, the fastest processor available in an Android phone. As we’ll see, it even beats Apple’s custom A-series chips in some benchmarks.

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus is available unlocked or from carriers in Phantom Black, Lavender (pictured), Cream, and Green colors. If purchased directly from Samsung, you can also get one of two exclusive colors: Lime and Graphite. The S23 Plus works on all major 5G networks across both sub-6GHz and mmWave frequencies in the US.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus design: Has it changed?

If you’ve touched a Galaxy S22 Plus at some point in the past year, you have a good idea of what the S23 Plus looks and feels like. The two phones are extremely close in size and shape, with the S23 Plus just a fraction of a millimeter wider. The aluminum frame encircling the phone doesn’t bleed into the back panel to surround the cameras like on the S22 Plus. Instead, you get individual camera cutouts for each of the three rear-facing sensors. This style is more consistent with Samsung’s Ultra phones.

The 6.6-inch OLED screen dominates the front of the phone, and we love the extremely slim and symmetrical bezels surrounding it. The edge-to-edge display with perfectly even bezels looks elegant — even more so than the S23 Ultra in some ways, which has a noticeably larger chin at the bottom. The S23 Plus’ OLED panel is also completely flat, whereas the S23 Ultra curves down on the left and right edges. That’s necessary to make a phone as huge as the S23 Ultra comfortable in the hand, but the S23 Plus is just below that limit. It’s easy enough to hold in one hand, the flat display won’t show as much glare in bright light, and you won’t get as many accidental touches.

The Galaxy S23 Plus is not a small phone, but it’s not a major imposition like the Galaxy S23 Ultra is. The latter, which is almost 40g heavier than the Plus, always seems on the verge of tumbling out of my hand or leaping from my pocket. The S23 Plus is much less ungainly, but it still offers plenty of screen real estate. It’s a great size if you want a big phone that isn’t going to stick out of your pocket.

Speaking of the screen, it’s not as much of a downgrade from the Ultra as you might expect. The 1,080 x 2,340 OLED looks crisp — it may not be QHD+, but almost 400 pixels per inch is nothing to sneeze at — and the peak brightness of 1,750 nits ensures you’ll be able to read it even under bright outdoor light. It gets glossed over sometimes, but Samsung’s OLEDs are also notable for how readable they are in low light. At minimum brightness, many phone screens are dingy, but the Galaxy S23 Plus is still contrasty and sharp with the brightness all the way down.

The aluminum frame has a glossy finish that shows smudges and fingerprints, but the back is a pristine expanse of silky matte glass. We adore Samsung’s glass texture because it almost doesn’t feel like glass. The smooth finish repels oils, and it’s not as slippery as glossy finishes on phones like the Google Pixel 7 and OnePlus 11. It’s the same Gorilla Glass Victus 2 as the front panel, which should hold up well even if you opt not to cover it with an S23 Plus case.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus performance: How fast is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy?

All the members of Samsung’s S23 family get the same Qualcomm system on a chip (SoC), and they’re the only phones that have it. The S23 Plus runs Samsung’s customized version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which has an overclocked prime CPU core and GPU. This isn’t just marketing fluff — the Samsung-exclusive chip is faster than other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phones in some benchmarks (notably those with mixed or CPU workloads), but the margin is small enough that it doesn’t make a noticeable difference in day-to-day use. For more detailed testing on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy, check out our deep dive at the link.

However, if you’re upgrading from last year’s Samsung flagships, you will definitely notice an improvement. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in the S23 Plus offers better performance than the Gen 1, particularly in games. All mobile SoCs throttle to some degree under sustained load; the S23 Plus is no different despite its unique chip design. Yet even when it heats up, the bespoke Snapdragon chip is still faster than most flagships at its peaks and it performs well enough in GPU stress tests.

We ran the S23 Plus through several benchmarks, including the new Geekbench 6 and the venerable 3DMark. Naturally, the flagship-class hardware put up impressive numbers. It scored within the margin of error for the entire Galaxy S23 series in Geekbench, topped the PCMark Work 3.0 test, and registered a 3,818 in 3DMark Wild Life Extreme — the latter a big jump the Galaxy S22 Plus’ 2,538 in the same GPU test. Interestingly though, we found thermal performance lagging slightly behind the S23 Ultra, which begins at a higher score in the 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test and plateaus at a marginally higher mark for repeated runs.

As for memory, Samsung only offers 8GB of RAM in the S23 Plus, no matter if you get the 256GB or 512GB storage option. The S23 Ultra has a SKU with 12GB of RAM, which is more future-proofed and in line with other flagships like the Pixel 7 Pro and OnePlus 11. However, we didn’t notice much difference between the two with regard to background apps. The Galaxy S23 Plus can instantly recall an app from the background that might not have been open for hours. Phones will less RAM will usually have to reload apps in that scenario.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus battery: How long will it last?

We never had any issues with battery life on the Galaxy S22 Plus, but some felt the 4,500mAh capacity was too small. Samsung upped the battery in this year’s non-Ultra phones, giving the S23 Plus 4,700mAh to work with. Based on our testing, you could spend the better part of a day streaming video on the S23 Plus and still have enough left in the tank to head out for the evening without fear of a dead battery. With more typical usage, the Galaxy S23 Plus will easily last a full day, and two days is within reach if you take just a few precautions, like making sure you’re fully charged before you unplug.

The Galaxy S23 Plus charges at a maximum power of 45W, which is higher than the 25W max of the baby Galaxy S23 and the same as the Galaxy S23 Ultra. The 45W rating isn’t the best you can get — that crown goes to OnePlus’ SuperVOOC-powered OnePlus 11 with 80-125W peaks depending on your region. But Samsung does still clobber Google’s piddly 23W charging on the Pixel 7 Pro.

Even when Samsung’s phones do ostensibly support higher speeds, the phones can be picky about how the power is delivered. Thankfully, the necessary Power Delivery PPS-equipped plugs are easy enough to find now — check out our guide for the best Galaxy S23 chargers for some great options. The S23 Plus has shown that, like the S23 Ultra, it maintains higher power for longer and with sharper peaks (up to 42W based on our testing), resulting in faster overall recharges — almost exactly one hour to go from zero to 100%.

Samsung is moving in the right direction, but at these prices, it would be nice to have even higher speeds. The 15W wireless charging option is appreciated, though only Samsung’s “Fast Wireless Charging 2.0” chargers are guaranteed to hit 15W. Most other wireless pads max at 10W via the S23 Plus’ Qi charging support.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus camera: Can it keep up with the best?

Samsung upgraded the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s primary camera this cycle, but the Galaxy S23 Plus and base model S23 are still using the same setup as their Galaxy S22 counterparts. That means you’re looking at a 50MP primary camera, which shoots pixel-binned 12.5MP photos by default. You can shoot in full 50MP resolution with the S23 Plus, but the binned photos usually look better unless you start cropping and zooming. If you like Samsung’s trademark photo processing, you’ll still like the S23 Plus just fine, but can it compete with the very best camera phones?

Photos taken on the S23 Plus are bright, with pumped-up colors and contrast. This can make some fine details a bit blurry, but the overall image may still look sharper if you don’t crop in. When light is low, Samsung leans toward longer exposures that make it harder to get clear photos of moving subjects. Both the Pixel 7 and Galaxy S23 Ultra shoot sharper, brighter photos. Night mode (which Samsung insists on calling “Nightography”) has gotten better over the past few generations, but the S23 Plus is at a disadvantage compared to the Ultra. That phone’s binned 200MP sensor can collect more light than the S23 Plus with its 50MP sensor even though the final image resolution is the same. While the S23 Ultra can trade blows with Google in night mode, the S23 Plus still runs behind.

The main sensor is optically stabilized, which helps a bit but cannot work miracles when the phone selects a 1/15 exposure time indoors. There’s no periscope zoom camera here, but you do get the lesser of the two telephoto lenses seen on the S23 Ultra. This 3x optical shooter will get you closer to your subject without losing pixels, but the sensor is only 10MP. If you push the zoom beyond 3x, the image quality rapidly deteriorates. The Ultra can push digital zoom to 100x, known as Space Zoom. The S23 Plus tops out at 30x, and even that is uselessly blurry.

While phones like the OnePlus 11 have moved to much higher resolution ultrawide cameras, we much prefer what the Galaxy S23 Plus can do here with its 12MP camera. Samsung’s aggressive photo processing evens out exposure across the frame while preserving most details. Since you’re not taking ultrawide photos to zoom in, the lower resolution isn’t a problem.

Likewise, the front-facing camera is only 12MP, but Samsung’s photo processing jives well with selfies. They’re crisp, evenly lit, and the pumped-up colors make everyone glow. You can do portrait mode with either front-facing or rear-facing cameras, but the results are better with the rear-facing array. As for the camera app, Samsung’s stock software is full-featured with slow-motion, pro modes for photo and video, and an Expert RAW mode if you want to process photos manually.

Samsung has been pushing video resolution for several years, first offering 8K on its 2020 flagship phones. You can shoot 8K at 30fps with this phone, not that you should. These files are huge, and you probably don’t even have an 8K display. More interesting is the sharp and more usable 4K option at up to 60fps, and you can even activate HDR10+ recording for better lighting. However, these videos are recorded in HEVC format, which some systems won’t understand.

Want to pixel-peep our samples? You can see the full-res images in this Google Drive folder.

Anything else?

• Software: The Galaxy S23 Plus runs the same build of Android 13 with One UI 5.1 as the S23 Ultra. The only difference is that the S23 Plus does not have all the S Pen add-on features. If you’ve used One UI in the last few years, you’ll feel right at home with the S23 Plus. There are few changes, and most of them are limited to Samsung’s built-in apps and services. There’s the aforementioned Expert RAW photo mode, improved device search, image editing options in the gallery app, better split-screen app suggestions, and Fast Pair for accelerated device setup. One UI might look different from the stock Android interface, but the operating system doesn’t do anything off-the-wall or overly confusing, as you might see in a heavier skin like OPPO’s Color OS.
• Updates: Samsung promises four years of full OS update support, meaning the S23 Plus will see Android 17 in late 2026 or early 2027. It should get a year of security patch support beyond that, making for the longest update policy of any Android phone. So far, our Galaxy S23 Plus has received up to the July 1, 2023 Play Store update and the September 2023 security patch.
• Connectivity: In the US, the S23 Plus supports both mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G networks, and the frequencies will get you the best possible coverage on all the major networks. We tested the S23 Plus mostly on T-Mobile, using the carrier’s low-band and ultra-capacity bands. Performance was as good as we’ve seen from a smartphone. In addition, the S23 Plus has Bluetooth 5.3, NFC, ultra-wideband (for Samsung’s smart tracker tags), and Wi-Fi 6E. There’s no Wi-Fi 7 support despite Qualcomm’s support at the chipset level, but it’s plenty future-proofed for modern Wi-Fi connectivity.
• Audio: Phones don’t often have great speakers, but we were pleasantly surprised by the Galaxy S23 Plus. The sound, whether music or a voice call, comes through clear, with very little distortion even at higher volumes. Much of the tinny quality present in other phone speakers is absent here, and there’s even a little bit of bass. The Galaxy S23 Plus also has comprehensive Bluetooth codec support for use with wireless headphones, as well as Bluetooth LE support for compatible devices.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus specs

Value and competition

It would have seemed unfathomable a few years ago that a $1,000 phone would not be top-of-the-line, but here we are. The Galaxy S23 Plus is the middle of Samsung’s S23 lineup, with the base model Galaxy S23 ($799 at Amazon) for $200 less and the S23 Ultra ($1199.99 at Samsung) for $200 more.

Many buyers will gravitate toward one of those extremes if they’re dead set on a new Samsung phone. The Galaxy S23 Ultra’s price is high, but it does offer a lot of upgrades for that extra $200 such as the 200MP primary and dual-telephoto cameras, S Pen functionality, a higher-spec display, and 12GB base RAM. Meanwhile, the jump from Galaxy S23 to S23 Plus isn’t quite as dramatic — you get a bigger screen and battery, faster charging, and the Galaxy S23’s 6.1-inch screen is sharper because of the smaller size. In years past, a 6.1-inch phone screen would have been enormous, but the move to taller screen ratios (the Galaxy S23 is 19.5:9) can make that diagonal measurement feel more cramped than you’d expect.

If you’re going to spend $1,000 on an Android phone, the S23 Plus is a fair value, though it probably won’t be your first stop if you’re looking for either a bargain or a phone that stands out from the pack.

The Google Pixel 7 Pro ($589.98 at Amazon) is $100 less, and it has unique software features and overall superior camera performance, even though they’re both working with Android 13 and a 50MP primary shooter. Google’s image processing algorithms work better than Samsung’s nine times out of ten. On the other hand, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 ($999.99 at Samsung) is the same price. It has a worse dual-camera setup, but Samsung’s clamshell-style foldable now has a matching Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset and a much, much larger cover display, dubbed the Flex Window. There are also cheaper options in Samsung’s Galaxy A family if you want to save some cash, like the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G ($449.99 at Samsung) with its 6.5-inch OLED and the same upgrade promise as the S23 Plus.

If you’re not married to Android, there’s also the Apple iPhone 15 Pro ($999 at Amazon) for the same price. This phone is a bit smaller than the Galaxy S23 Plus at 6.1 inches, but it takes Apple’s previous iPhone 14 Pro improvements even further. It swaps stainless steel for titanium and ditches the alert slider for a customizable action button, a la the Apple Watch Ultra. Apple also bumped its Pro-tier flagship to a new A17 Pro chipset with an emphasis on next-level gaming.

If the spiffy new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is alluring, the OnePlus 11 ($1296 at Amazon) is the cheapest way to get it. It doesn’t have the custom overclocked chip and it showed some erratic results under GPU load in our testing, but its cooling solution is more efficient and can reach higher highs with just the stock Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Although, OnePlus’ take on Android 13 is a bit rougher around the edges ever since Oxygen OS merged with OPPO’s Color OS. One UI 5.1 is at least as good, even if you’ve avoided Samsung’s software in the past. You also miss out of any wireless charging and will have to contend with OnePlus’ hit-and-miss camera processing.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus review: The verdict

It’s a foregone conclusion that the S23 Plus will be the least popular member of the S23 family, but that’s not because it’s a bad phone — that would be impossible when it shares so much with the other Galaxy S23 variants. However, it serves a niche: people who want a big Samsung flagship without the expensive gimmicks of the S23 Ultra. You won’t get an S Pen or a fancy quad-camera array, but the Galaxy S23 Plus gets all the other important things, like the latest Snapdragon chip, a phenomenal OLED screen, and Samsung’s killer update promise. The Galaxy S23 Plus is perfect if you want a big, no-nonsense phone.

Carrying the S23 Plus is a joy compared to the Ultra, which is bigger, heavier, and more square. You can tell the Ultra is in your pocket every minute of the day. That won’t be a problem for some, but the S23 Plus is slim and unobtrusive enough that anyone will be able to ignore its presence until they need it. The materials, construction, and design are all the best you’ll see this side of the iPhone, too. We’re particularly fond of Samsung’s matte glass, which gives you the scratch resistance of glass without making the phone a slippery fingerprint magnet.

Perhaps the best thing about the S23 Plus is that it’s almost all screen, and the screen is a stunner. There’s a hole-punch at the top for the selfie camera, but the display is otherwise uninterrupted, surrounded by a narrow symmetrical bezel. It’s crisp and readable outdoors with its maximum 1,750 nits of luminance, and it gets dimmer than most phones without becoming a fuzzy, low-contrast mess.

Yes, $1,000 is a lot for a phone, but Samsung has attractive trade-in offers. Even after the pre-order bonanza, you can get $400-500 for trading in one of last year’s Galaxy S models. If you can part with your old phone, the S23 Plus starts to look more attractive. Samsung’s upgrade guarantee also ensures you can use the Galaxy S23 Plus for years without worrying about being left in the dust.

Top Galaxy S23 Plus questions and answers