Forget Plus and Ultra, I want a Galaxy S23 focused on music — here’s why

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Earlier this week, after months of rumors, Samsung finally confirmed that it will be hosting an Unpacked event on February 1st.

And while audiophile readers of this page may meet the news with a casual shrug, with the budget Galaxy Buds 3 earbuds being the only relevant release expected at the event, for most hardware aficionados, it’s a big deal for one main reason: Samsung expected Extremely. The Galaxy S23 family of smartphones is expected to debut.

To catch people who don’t follow the phone market religiously, the Galaxy S23 is expected to be one of the biggest competitors to Apple’s iPhone this year and a direct follow-up to the Galaxy S22, which we gave five stars after extensive testing last year.

And if pre-release rumors are to be believed, the S23 will be a huge step forward that features some major changes, the biggest of which are expected to be upgrades to the phone’s zoom capabilities, extended battery life, and a step up to use Qualcomm. Snapdragon silicon in every market.

To be clear, as a tech fan, these upgrades are not to be sniffed. The Ultra version of the S22 we reviewed last year offered some of the best zoom shooting capabilities we’ve seen on a smartphone.

It should also move to use the flagship Snapdragon CPU – based on our time using Exynos variants that Samsung shipped to the UK – paving the way for better battery life and faster overall performance. This was certainly the case with previous Samsung phones I tested, with Snapdragon models of the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S21, and Galaxy S20 sold in the US, all of which offer superior battery life compared to their Exynos-powered counterparts in the UK (Exynos is Samsung its own .line of mobile CPUs).

But for me, there’s one gap Samsung needs to bridge if it wants to interest me in the Galaxy S23, based on the rumblings I’ve heard in the pre-release industry so far.

Specifically, from what I’ve heard, Samsung has no plans to upgrade the Galaxy phones’ audio performance.

This may seem like a small quibble, but for me—an avid Tidal subscriber who because of my budget can’t afford to invest in a dedicated HD unit like the Astell & Kern A & Norma SR25 MKII that ranks at the top of our best portable music player guide—it’s a big deal. .

Today’s best Astell & Kern A & Norma SR25 MkII deals

Many times I’m forced to use my phone as my primary music player, and after reviewing cell phones for over a decade, I can safely tell you that sound quality varies widely between devices.

Last year, this was clearly demonstrated by the S22 Ultra. Using the phone for more than a week right before Christmas, I fell in love with the device’s camera, great resolution screen and solid gaming performance. But after my testing period ended, I couldn’t wait to swap my sim card to a different phone because the sound quality simply wasn’t as good as that of competing flagships.

Listening to a wide variety of tracks on Apple Music, Tidal, and Spotify, the S23 Ultra fails to deliver the same consistency and clarity that I experienced with the Apple iPhone 13 and Sony Xperia 1 IV.

That’s why I really hoped that this year Samsung would focus on improving the sound of its flagship and finally deliver a device that I could use comfortably for the long haul.

In an ideal world, for me personally, this would take the form of a music-focused variant of the S23 sitting alongside the base model and the more expensive Plus and Ultra models expected to launch on February 1st.

In my head, this would be a modernized version of the Onkyo Grandbeat from 2017, which was essentially a portable music player with its own built-in DAC and specialized circuit design that focused on sound quality. Or the five-star LG G5 with the Hi-Fi Plus DAC we tested back in 2016.

But truth be told I’d settle for a more modest improvement down the line overall, and that really should be an easy win for Samsung given the amount of R&D budget they have and the wealth of their audio companies, which include the Harman Kardon Group, home to the likes of AKG, JBL and Arcam. .

more:

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