Review: Samsung Galaxy A23 5G

It’s not a good sign when you’ve thought about throwing your smartphone out the window. Not because of—well, *gestures at everything*— but because it’s just so frustrating to use. I went out to dinner recently, and a colleague—who was using a six-year-old iPhone SE—pointed out how slow my brand-new phone was. I was ready to toss the thing. 

The culprit was Samsung’s new Galaxy A23 5G, a $300 Android phone. You might be thinking that I’m being too harsh on a cheap phone, which is fair. These budget phones have to make sacrifices somewhere. But even sub-$200 phones perform better than this one. You have other options in this price range, and you should explore them. 

What’s sad is that the Galaxy A23 5G has a few things going for it. First and foremost, Samsung promises to support this phone for four years for security updates and it will get three OS upgrades (up to Android 15). That’s far better than any other sub-$400 Android phone, period. You’ll be able to get new features, have a device free of bugs, and not have to worry about security flaws for a good length of time. 

It has a 6.6-inch LCD screen with a 120-Hz refresh rate, the latter of which isn’t common to see at this price. The screen feels responsive, it’s quite spacious (great if you prefer big phones), and it gets bright enough to see clearly on sunny days. I don’t have any qualms here. The next best feature? The A23 5G has a 5,000-mAh battery, so it will last two full days on a single charge with average use. I didn’t bother plugging it in every night because it usually hit around 50 percent. It’s nice not having to worry about a dead phone!

There’s sub-6 5G support across all major carriers, so you won’t be stuck on 4G LTE alone, plus this smartphone has other perks that are increasingly missing on high-end flagships. That includes a headphone jack for anyone who still prefers to plug in, as well as an NFC sensor so you can make tap-to-pay contactless payments at retailers that support it. There’s even a microSD card slot, which you’ll want to use because the phone only comes with 64 gigabytes of storage. 

Photograph: Samsung

My woes with the Galaxy A23 5G start with its processor: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 695. It’s odd because the Moto G Stylus 5G 2022 I tested earlier this year uses the same chip and I didn’t have any performance issues there. It might come down to the fact that the Motorola phone has 8 gigabytes of RAM and this Samsung is stuck with a paltry 4 gigs.

You won’t notice too many issues when you’re just using a single app. I’ve been able to use this as my primary device just fine for more than a week. I can send emails, browse Twitter (welp), and respond to messages. It’s when you start using a few apps simultaneously that things go awry. There are long pauses as you wait for an app to fully open and load, but it’s the physical act of switching apps that frustrated me the most.

I use the gesture navigation system on Android phones. I immediately switch to it if the device I'm testing relies on Android’s old three-button bottom navigation system by default. I’ve never had a problem using gestures to navigate a device, except on the A23 5G. For some reason, swiping up from the bottom of an app wouldn’t always take me to the home screen, let alone switch to the prior app. Apps would often get stuck, and I’d have to keep swiping up from the bottom—with varying levels of anger—waiting for the home screen to appear.

The resolution to this? Switching to the three-button navigation system. Things have drastically improved, but you will see stutters and lag as you try to juggle a few apps at the same time. There are moments in our day-to-day lives when we need to do a few tasks on our phone fast—maybe we’re in a rush and are quickly trying to look up some information. If you’re often in this position, then the A23 5G isn’t for you. 

This laggy performance extends to other parts of the device. The side-mounted fingerprint sensor is slow to unlock the phone, and more annoying is the lag when you try to take a photo. Good luck capturing any kind of movement because there’s a one-second delay from tapping the shutter to the image capture, so if your subject moves, you’ll end up with a blurry photo.

Speaking of the camera, there’s nothing to write home about. Daytime shots are OK, but colors tend to be all over the place. When the sun goes down, there’s a sharp drop in detail, though you can get some serviceable photos when you use Night mode (if you stand still perfectly). It wasn’t terribly better than the cheaper OnePlus Nord N300 5G—in fact, the OnePlus often outperformed it. The A23 5G didn’t hold a candle to the Google Pixel 6A. 

The 50-MP main camera is joined by a 5-MP ultrawide, a 2-MP macro camera, and a 2-MP depth camera for Portrait mode, and all I have to say is: Why? The latter cameras produce lackluster results. I’d much prefer a better primary camera or a cheaper price instead of overstuffing this phone with image sensors. 

What really sinks the Galaxy A23 5G is that it has tough competition. The Google Pixel 6A, our top cheap phone, has dipped as low as $299 for several weeks. I also vastly prefer Samsung’s Galaxy A53 5G, which has better performance, an OLED screen, and even adds water resistance to the mix; it usually goes for $350 these days. Both of those phones will be supported for a long time too. Heck, I actually enjoyed using Samsung’s Galaxy A13 5G more than this handset, and it’s just $250. Samsung just has too many phones. Did the A23 5G need to exist?