While performance is the main speciality of the phone, there are obviously some drawbacks and places of cost-cutting as well. We will explore those in today’s review

Whenever we talk about Samsung’s latest Galaxy F23 smartphone, all we can talk about is its phenomenal performance. 

Available at Tk27,999 for the 6GB RAM and 128GB storage version, the smartphone rocks a Snapdragon 750G 5G chipset inside. 

While performance is the main speciality of the phone, there are obviously some drawbacks and places of cost-cutting as well. We will explore those in today’s review. 

The back of the phone felt and looked good in hand. Available in Copper Blush, Forest Green, and Aqua Blue, the phone’s plastic back is polished and gives a decent look. 

However, looking at the front, you are bound to be disappointed a little. The chins, especially the bottom one, seemed a little too big for a smartphone that costs 28k. The dewdrop or waterdrop notch was also unexpected in a smartphone of this price segment. A punch-hole camera would have been nicer. 

Apart from that, the phone is 6.52 inches in height, 3.03 inches in width and with an 8.4 mm thickness and weighs 198 grams. This is not much to notice, but it will stay on the heavier side for some smartphone users. 

All the buttons and ports are in place and there is absolutely nothing to complain about. The power button of the phone also acts as a fingerprint sensor and that was quick enough. 

However, the fact that the phone only has a mono speaker instead of a stereo setup seemed odd. Then again, many smartphone manufacturers are moving towards mono speakers nowadays in this price segment. Oppo did it for their F21 Pro as well. The only exception might be Xiaomi. 

In a recent press release sent by Samsung, the company claimed that this is the first-ever Snapdragon 750G phone in Bangladesh, which is true. The existing phones with the chipset in Bangladesh are mostly unofficial phones or smartphones people bought abroad and brought into the country. 

Snapdragon 750G is an amazing chipset. It is built in an 8nm architecture, so it is power efficient. The chipset scored 391,266 in AnTuTu 9 benchmark. In Geekbench, it scored 659 in the single-core segment and 2004 in the multi-core segment. 

All of the graphics-intensive games run very smoothly in Samsung Galaxy F23. Asphalt 9, PUBG Mobile, Mobile Legends, and Call of Duty Mobile performed really well in medium to high-medium graphics settings. There will be a few frame drops in high settings though, especially if you are playing for long. 

Just like other Snapdragon chipsets, 750G also heats up after extensive gaming. Samsung did introduce a cooling mechanism to keep things cool, but it can only control the heat. Besides, during summer, smartphones usually heat up more than usual due to the increasing room temperature. 

Thanks to the 5G chipset, the network reception of the phone was also good. 

Talking about cost-cutting, this might be the biggest of all. Samsung somehow got the idea of putting a TFT LCD panel in a smartphone that costs 28k. The display does have a higher refresh rate of 120Hz. But other smartphones around this price range usually provide an AMOLED panel. Samsung, being one of the most popular companies producing OLED panels, I kind of expected their own display technology in this phone. 

That being said, it is not all that bad either. The display does have a 1080 x 2408 pixels resolution and a good viewing angle. As a bonus, this is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5, which will protect the display from accidental drops. Still, as always, I will recommend using a protector and a case with the phone. 

The phone has a 6.6 inches display with around 82.3% screen-to-body ratio.

The camera on this phone is pretty decent. The phone has a triple camera setup on the back, consisting of a 50MP main camera, which is also wide, an 8MP 123 degrees ultrawide camera and an unnecessary 2MP macro lens. I’m calling it unnecessary because I really don’t find a reason behind smartphone manufacturers putting a 2MP macro sensor on the back, even though it has kind of become a common industry practice by now. 

I think providing a 5MP macro camera instead of 2 would be a better choice from all aspects. People will end up using it to capture images they can proudly share on Instagram or Facebook. 

For selfies, the Galaxy F23 has an 8MP wide camera on the front. 

The 50MP main camera captured images just like many other 50MP sensors out there. On some occasions, it even captured better images. The nighttime performance was also good. The edge detection of portraits was really good as well. Samsung has been working really hard on this. 

The selfie camera is also decent. While the selfies did not provide natural photos, they were mostly ready-to-post selfies. Most selfie cameras nowadays do some post-processing to make the images look better, and Samsung Galaxy F23 is no different.

To run all these, the phone comes with a 5,000 mAh battery, which supports 25Watts charging. 

With a 120Hz TFT LCD display, the battery should not have performed well. But it did. The screen on time was around 7 hours on average. With the 25 Watts charger provides in the box, it should take around 1 and half hours to fully charge the phone. 

Samsung Galaxy F23 5G is a device you can rely on if you prioritize performance and gaming within a 28k budget. The only downside in my opinion was its display. Other than that, Galaxy F23 is a good overall package.