Samsung Galaxy S23 FE: Snapdragon vs. Exynos compared

The Galaxy S23 FE is a refresh of the rather popular Galaxy S21 FE, improving the design, the performance, and the camera quality. It comes in two different variants, depending on the market. The North American model is based on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, while the global model uses the Exynos 2200.

Having different chipsets, even if equal in performance, will lead to inevitable differences in battery life, camera performance, and system stability. And since we got the two models - SM-S711U1 representing Snapdragon and SM-S711B representing Exynos, this comparison article was just inevitable.

Table of Contents:

You can check out our editor's assessment in the following video or in the text further down below.

Display comparison

The two Galaxy S23 FE models feature identical display panels – 6.4-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screens of 1,080 x 2,340pixels, 120Hz refresh rate, and support for HDR10+ streaming. Samsung is advertising them for up to 1,450 nits of peak brightness.

And, quite expectedly, both screens have nearly identical brightness capabilities - 985nits for the Snapdragon vs. 1,007 for the Exynos variant in Auto mode and 485nits for the Snapdragon vs. 478nits for the Exynos model with manual control.

Both screens offer accurate color calibration.

The refresh rate supports two modes in both models – up to 60Hz and up to 120Hz. If the latter is chosen, the screen will revert back to 60Hz for static content and video playback.

Battery life

Both Galaxy S23 FE Snapdragon and S23 FE Exynos are powered by 4,500 mAh batteries.

And we found the first difference between the two in the battery life department. The Snapdragon model turned out to be the better performer. It gauged a 9:45h active use time vs. 8:28h on the Exynos version.

The two models were neck and neck when it comes to web browsing and social media apps, but the Snapdragon version edged ahead by around 20% in every other scenario.

Samsung
Galaxy S23 FE (Snapdragon)
4500 mAh
9:45h 34:15h 8:09h 11:27h5:56h