Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S23 FE has popped up in an online benchmark today, and the phone's most controversial hardware detail is now confirmed — or at least as close as it can be to the “confirmed” status without Samsung spilling the beans. Namely, the Galaxy S23 FE is powered by an Exynos 2200 chipset.
The phone popped up in Geekbench earlier today, rocking the SM-S711B model number, Android 13, 8GB of RAM, and an s5e9925 motherboard. The latter detail corresponds to the Exynos 2200 SoC.
No Snapdragon for you!
While Samsung is getting ready to relaunch the Galaxy S21 FE in India with a Snapdragon chipset under the hood, the company's newer Galaxy S23 FE won't adopt a Qualcomm chipset.
There's no evidence of a Snapdragon variant happening at launch, and our own sources tell us that the Galaxy S23 FE will be exclusively powered by Exynos.
Unfortunately, the Exynos 2200 SoC doesn't have the best reputation. It had a rocky launch when it debuted alongside the Galaxy S22 series, and it took a few months of patching for the flagship experience to improve. Thankfully, it did, and the Exynos 2200 SoC is not that bad nowadays, thanks to extensive optimization.
Although performance might not be an issue at the end of the day, and even though the Galaxy S23 FE might be released in a better state than the Galaxy S22 was last year, it might not be enough to satisfy prospective Galaxy S23 FE buyers.
Samsung appears to be using the Fan Edition device to get rid of excess Exynos 2200 SoC stock, which might put some fans off. But another reason why Samsung picked this chip may have been to show the world that its chip manufacturing and optimizing capabilities have improved.
The Galaxy S23 FE is expected to go on sale later this year, in Q4, and although benchmarks don't say this, the device might benefit from an upgraded rear camera.
