During Black Friday deals this year, I bought a Samsung Galaxy S23+ smartphone. My OnePlus 8 still works fine, but I wanted a phone with more storage and better cameras. Here are my impressions so far.
Samsung are one of the best Android phone brands, but they are also pricey and not a lot of big discounts. When I saw a certified renewed 256GB Samsung Galaxy S23+ on sale with any Android phone trade-in, I jumped on the deal. I traded in my old LG G5 which still works, but is way too old and slow to even be a backup phone. Samsung certified renewed phones have 1 year warranty like new phones, so I’m okay with taking a refurbished device for the extra discount.
The S23+ came in a small black box like all Samsung smartphones these days. Inside the box, there’s the phone, USB-C data/charging cable, and a few pamphlets of reading material. Nowadays a lot of smartphones don’t include power adapters anymore, but good thing I still have a few lying around.
The S23+ is a bigger version of the Galaxy S23, and has a 6.6 AMOLED screen. The one I bought was black, so it had the matte black back with a shiny dark metal sides. The 3 camera lenses are located on the upper left corner of the back of the phone, and the protrude out a bit which is a little strange, but Samsung probably figured that most people would buy a case which would cover the protrusion. The phone has a nice weight to it and feels well constructed and solid. Size-wise, it is a little wider and a little shorter than the OnePlus 8, and feels more rectangular in construction.
Setup and data transfer from my OnePlus 8 was an easy process. I don’t play games on the phone, but the UI feels snappy from daily use. The photos are definitely better than the OnePlus 8. I had a S22 work phone that I used as my primary camera, and so far the photos from the S23+ look comparable. With 256GB of storage I don’t have to worry about running out of space for a while. Another plus is that the fingerprint reader has been quite good so far. I’ve struggled with the one on my S22 work phone, but so far the S23+ fingerprint reader has worked most of the time. Finally, the S23+ has wireless charging which my new car has, so now I don’t even need to plug in the cable to charge my phone in the car.
That’s all for my quick impressions of my Samsung Galaxy S23+. Hopefully it’ll be problem free and keep chugging along. As for the OnePlus 8, I’ll keep it as my backup phone.