The latest Samsung Galaxy S23 leak points to a major performance boost
Everything is faster
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The grand unveiling of theSamsung Galaxy S23could be just a month and a bit away now, and the leaks around this flagship smartphone continue to drip in. The latest rumor brings with it some encouraging news about the potential performance boost that the new phone is going to bring with it.
According to tipsterAhmed Qwaider, the Galaxy S23 series – the standard model, the Plus model, and the Ultra model – will boast a 36% increase in processor speed, a 48% increase in graphics performance, and a 60% increase in neural processing (AI-related tasks like voice recognition and smart photo editing).
These improvements are courtesy of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor from Qualcomm,which we’re hearingmight be fitted inside the Galaxy S23 phones in every region. Normally,Samsunguses a Snapdragon processor in some parts of the world and one of its own Exynos processors in others when it comes to the Galaxy S series.
Early arrivals
While we already know plenty about theSnapdragon 8 Gen 2, we haven’t heard specific percentage improvements for the Galaxy S23 phones. The performance boosts the chipset is going to bring to phones in 2023 will vary depending on how manufacturers optimize it to work with their own hardware and software.
It looks as though theOnePlus 11is going to be the first handset to go on sale with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 on board. It’s scheduled to get its grand unveiling in China on Wednesday, January 4, with a global launch event on the calendar the month after that, on Tuesday, February 7.
The Samsung Galaxy S23 family looks likely to make an appearanceearly in February, based on what we’ve heard from those in the know, so we don’t have much longer to wait until everything is official – and no doubt Samsung will have some performance figures of its own to share as well.
Analysis: the need for speed
We’re expecting the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor to feature in quite a few flagship Android smartphones throughout the course of 2023. Perhaps the only significant exception will be theGoogle Pixel 8, which is likely to use a custom Tensor G3 CPU.
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You can make a fair case for arguing that smartphones are already plenty fast enough – indeed theiPhone 14has stuck with the sameAppleA15 Bionic chipset that was inside the iPhone 13 the year before – but bear in mind that the demands that we put on our phones are always increasing too.
Apps and games continue to get more complex, photos and videos continue to get larger and more detailed, and then of course there are the wealth of AI tricks that our handsets can do now (like recognizing the sound of your voice). All this portable computing needs a chipset that can keep up.
And bear in mind too that chipset upgrades like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 aren’t just about improvements in performance: they also bring with them increased efficiency, which should equate to less of a demand on battery power.
Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you’ll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.
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