It’s not a good sign when you think of throwing your smartphone out the window. Not because—well, *points at everything*— but because it is difficult to use. Recently, I went to dinner and a colleague—who was using a six-year-old child iPhone SE—shows how slow my brand new phone is. I’m ready to throw everything.
The culprit is Samsung’s new Galaxy A23 5G, a $300 Android phone. You might think I’m being too strict with a cheap phone, that’s fair. These budget phones have to make sacrifices some where. But even phones under $200 perform better than this one. You have other options in this price range and you should explore them.
what works
The sad thing 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 receive three OS upgrades (up to Android 15). That’s much better than any other under-$400 Android phone. You’ll be able to get new features, have a bug-free device and not have to worry about security flaws for a long time.
The machine has a 6.6-inch LCD screen with 120 Hz . refresh rate, the latter is not commonly seen at this price point. The screen feels responsive, quite spacious (great if you like big phones) and bright enough to see clearly on sunny days. I don’t have any apprehensions here. Next best feature? The A23 5G has a 5,000 mAh battery, so it should last two days on a single charge with average usage. I don’t bother plugging it in every night because it’s usually around 50 percent. It’s nice to not have to worry about a dead phone!
yes sub 6 5G support on all major carriers, so you won’t be stuck using only 4G LTE, in addition, this smartphone has other perks that are increasingly lacking on high-end flagship. That includes a headphone jack for anyone who still likes plug in, as well as an NFC sensor so you can make contactless payments to pay at retailers that support this feature. There’s even a microSD card slot that you’ll want to use since the phone only has 64 gigabytes of storage.
what not
Photo: Samsung
My troubles with the Galaxy A23 5G started with its processor: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 695. It’s strange because Moto G 5G 2022 stylus pen I tested earlier this year using the same chip and I didn’t have any performance issues there. It can lead to the fact that Motorola phones with 8 gigabytes of RAM and this Samsung stuck with 4 small contracts.
You won’t notice too many problems using just one app. I was able to use this as my primary device for over a week. I can email, browse Twitter (help) and reply to the message. That’s when you start using several apps simultaneously, things go awry. There are long pauses as you wait for an app to open and load completely, but the physical act of switching apps frustrates me the most.
I use gesture navigation system on Android phones. I immediately switch to it if the device I’m testing on relies on Android’s old three-button bottom navigation system by default. I never had problems using gestures to navigate the device, except on the A23 5G. For some reason, swiping up from the bottom of an app doesn’t always take me to the home screen let alone switch to the previous app. Apps often get stuck and I have to keep swiping from the bottom—with varying degrees of anger—waiting for the home screen to appear.
