The 3 Samsung Galaxy S23 upgrades we want – and 1 we don't

The Samsung Galaxy S22 is one of the very best Android phones and one of the very best phones full stop. But phone years are rather like dog years: by the time the Samsung Galaxy S23 arrives next Spring, today's model is going to look awfully old. By then we'll have seen the iPhone 14, which will no doubt raise Apple's game considerably. So how could Samsung improve this year's best Galaxy phone for 2023? We have some ideas.

Here are three things we think the Galaxy S23 should improve, and one thing we definitely don't want.

We want: better software

The Samsung Galaxy S22 runs Android, of course, but it runs Samsung's flavour of it – and multiple reviewers have pointed out that some other Android firms' phones, notably OnePlus and Xiaomi, feel a whole lot smoother; you might quibble with that but it's clearly not quite as quick as a stock Android installation on otherwise identical hardware. That's not an issue on mid-range phones but when you're paying for a flagship phone you expect the software to be supremely silky at all times, so if Samsung could find and fix the bottlenecks in One UI that'd be a big plus for every Galaxy phone, especially the more expensive S23s.

We want: a bigger battery

The standard S22 has a relatively small 3,700mAh battery, which is small for that size and class of phone: the S22 plus gets 4,500mAh. And while we understand that Samsung wants to differentiate its three models as well as keep the headline price for the standard S22 as low as possible, battery life is the one thing we have to deal with almost every day. As great as the best power banks are, we should only really need them for big adventures, not for slightly busier days.

We want: even better cameras

The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra camera now goes up to 108MP but an even better sensor with up to 200MP resolution is rumoured for the Galaxy S23 Ultra. While that would be nice, what would make a bigger difference to a bigger number of people is for Samsung to improve the camera hardware in the standard S23. The S22 is currently packing a maximum of 50MP, but most of its improvements came in software; it'd be nice to see the cameras in all the Galaxy S23s given a bump, not just the ones in the Ultra.

We don't want: inferior Exynoses

For years now, Samsung has offered its Galaxy phones with two different chipsets in key markets: a Qualcomm Snapdragon in the US and its own Exynos in Europe. And while the latest Exynos is a huge improvement over its predecessors, it's probably fair to say that Qualcomm still makes the better chips.

From a consumer point of view, that means the European phones are offering what is technically an upgraded processor, but one that is still slightly inferior to the US ones – so if Samsung's continuing down the Exynos path, which of course it is, we'd like to see some big improvements in the next generation.

What we don't want is another "upgrade" that isn't quite the same upgrade as identical model phones are getting in other territories.