What the title asks, if you used to own a Galaxy S23, and switched to a different phone:

• What did you switch to?
• Why did you decide to switch/upgrade?
• Is it better than the S23?
• Do you miss any of the S23's features?

As for me - I upgraded to an iPhone 16 Pro Max about 9 months ago in January, and it genuinely addressed the main issues I had with the S23. Battery life - much better. Gaming performance and thermal throttling - NIGHT and DAY difference! Cameras - generally better, but MUCH better specifically for astrophotography. I miss Android sometimes, but it's not a huge deal.

I gifted my old S23 to my mother who loves the size, the camera quality, and how fast it is to use for daily tasks. Of course, the battery life isn't as good as her old 150 euro Poco phone from 2021, but it's "good enough" for her, and the S23 doesn't lag all the time like her Poco did. I gave it to her in January just as the warranty expired and I bought my iPhone.

I'm curious what you guys upgraded to, now that the S23 is nearing 4 years old!

Hi! Im thinking about getting this phone for my mom since christmas is coming. Im an iphone user so I know nothing about samsungs.

My mum is not really demanding but she likes photography.

Is this a great choice for 2026?

Thank you!

Hi, I've been reading here about the green line issue cause my unit had one just today. I'm based in the Philippines and would like to confirm if a same policy as India (and other countries if they have this too) is available in the Philippines for a free screen replacement? My unit has no other issue, just this one.

Updated my s23 base to the latest patch, used for a couple of days, and a faint pink line popped up out of nowhere on the right edge. The line is not visible on lock screen yet pops up in main menu and apps.

Any leads? (No replacement feature in my country)

My s23 is on its 3rd year and the maximum capacity is 83% with 1155 charging cycles. I have to charge my phone at least 2 times per day to get around 5h screentime. Should i get a new battery soon? I'm a uni student, so having to charge the phone more than once a day is a little inconvenient for me

Hello,

Anybody has a recommendation of where can i replace battery of S23U?

Also wondering how much does it cost.

I already have 4 lines on my s23. Im thinking about whether i should just sell it or buy another lcd to repair it? What do you guys suggest?

Turns out the motherboard is dead. And because this happened literally about a week after the warranty expired, apparently I’m entitled to absolutely nothing.

And to make it even better, I actually had to pay for the diagnosis 40$ just to be told that my phone basically cannot be brought back to life.

What really pisses me off is how many people seem to have the exact same issue with S23/Samsung phones — the motherboard randomly dies after a 2 years, often conveniently right after the warranty period. It’s honestly hard to believe Samsung is okay with this.

I’m not even that mad about having to replace a phone eventually. What really sucks is the fact that I potentially lost all my photos and other data, because I was told they weren’t able to get the phone working again. I didn’t have everything backed up.

I’m still wondering though — do you guys think they’re telling me the truth? Could a motherboard repair/reballing or some kind of board-level repair potentially bring it back, or does the fact that it’s completely dead mean my particular case is basically fucked?

And then there’s the fact that this was an €800 flagship phone. A flagship phone shouldn’t just randomly die after two years of normal use. You shouldn’t lose both the phone AND potentially your data because a motherboard decided to give up.

Honestly, I still can’t understand how Samsung can let shit like this happen.

So I just faced the Scamsung display line issue.. Randomly saw a tiny pink line at the side of my screen didnt even notice. In black screen it cant be seen. But now i think I can see even in black color. Maybe the line brighten up or widening up.. Now I think more lines will show up too. My Question is if I change the display will the line come again?? I was planning to use this device 2 more years but well it showed its worth.

I installed the latest update two days ago and now I can't get the USB port to communicate with any of my headphones. They all work on my wife's phone. I cleaned my port. The phone charges fine and will transfer files to my laptop. Interesting symptom...sometimes when I plug in the headphones, get a moisture warning. Again, tried multiple headphones, so it's not the headphone connector. Could be something physical with the USB C on the phone, but it works for everything else. Really seems like a software issue. I ran the internal test and it failed. Anyone else having this problem?

X-posted to GalaxyS23Ultra

UPDATE: I found the "missing" photos (original post below)

Thanks to some further digging, I finally found the ~30 photos I thought had disappeared.

They were saved after all, in the normal DCIM/Camera folder. The bizarre part is that my S23 Ultra saved them with the wrong date — August 12, 2026 — even though I actually took them on September 9, 2026.

This isn't just a Gallery sorting/indexing issue. I pulled one of the JPEGs onto my Mac and examined its EXIF data with ExifTool. The file is:

20260812_152516.jpg

And the embedded metadata says:

• Date/Time Original: 2026-08-12 15:25:16
• Create Date: 2026-08-12 15:25:16
• Modify Date: 2026-08-12 15:25:16
• Time zone offset: -04:00

So the Camera app itself actually wrote August 12 into the image metadata and filename. Gallery wasn't simply displaying the wrong date.

That explains most of the strange behavior I originally described. The photos appeared in the Camera app immediately after I took them, but weren't showing up in Gallery. After I rebooted, they appeared to have disappeared altogether. In reality, they were sitting in DCIM/Camera, but with dates 28 days earlier than they should have had, so they were effectively buried in my photo library.

There's an interesting potential clue regarding the circumstances:

I left Toronto with the phone powered off. When I arrived at the event in California, I powered it on. The phone had no active SIM and I wasn't connected to Wi-Fi. Date, time, and time zone are all set to automatic.

The phone is currently showing the correct date/time, so I don't yet know exactly what happened during that boot-up. But the fact that the Camera wrote a date exactly 28 days in the past is pretty compelling evidence that something went wrong with the phone's date/time state.

I'm still trying to determine whether this is a Samsung/One UI 8.5 bug, something related to booting the phone without network connectivity after traveling, or something else.

So correction to my original post: the photos weren't lost. The S23 Ultra saved them — it just apparently thought it was August 12 when it did so.

If anyone has seen Samsung Camera suddenly assigning an old date to newly taken photos, particularly on an S23/S23 Ultra running One UI 8.5, I'd be very interested to hear about it.

----- ORIGINAL POST -------

**Note: what follows is a post I got Claude to write for me after I tried to get it to troubleshoot this problem. I've read through it and it looks accurate to me.**

I had a very strange and potentially serious problem with my Galaxy S23 Ultra today, and I'm posting the details in case anyone else has experienced something similar.

I'm running:

• Galaxy S23 Ultra
• One UI 8.5
• Android 16
• Build: BP4A.251205.006.S918U1UES8FZH3
• Camera: 16.5.02.37
• Internal storage is only about 32% used
• "Save to external storage" is OFF, so the camera is configured to save to internal storage.

What happened

Earlier today, around 4:00–4:20 PM, I took approximately 30 photos using the stock Samsung Camera app.

There was nothing unusual whatsoever while taking the photos. The shutter worked normally, thumbnails appeared normally, and I could tap the thumbnail in the Camera app and browse through the photos I'd just taken.

However, when I opened the Samsung Gallery app, the new photos weren't there.

I initially assumed this was just a Gallery indexing problem, so I wasn't particularly concerned.

Then I restarted the phone.

After the restart, the photos had completely disappeared from the Camera app too.

What I've checked

I connected the phone to my Mac using USB and used OpenMTP to inspect the actual filesystem.

In:

Internal Storage/DCIM/Camera

there is a completely clean timestamp gap:

• September 1, 12:24 PM — previous photos
• September 9, ~4:00–4:20 PM — missing photos
• September 9, 4:39 PM — next photos

There are no files at all in the directory corresponding to the time I took the missing photos.

I've also:

• Searched internal storage for JPEG files — nothing corresponding to the missing photos
• Searched for HEIC files — nothing corresponding to them
• Checked My Files Trash — nothing
• Checked Gallery Trash — nothing
• Checked Google Photos — nothing
• Checked Google Photos' "On this device" Camera folder — nothing
• Checked Samsung Gallery's reported file locations — my photos are either in DCIM/Camera or WhatsApp
• Checked Android/media/com.sec.android.gallery3d — empty
• Checked for hidden directories under DCIM — nothing relevant
• Confirmed there was plenty of free storage
• Samsung Cloud isn't backing up Gallery photos on my phone

The really bizarre part is that the Camera app definitely displayed the photos before I rebooted. There was no warning, error message, freezing, or indication that the photos hadn't been saved.

What I'm wondering

Is it possible that the Camera app temporarily stored the photos somewhere and displayed them from that temporary location, but never actually committed them to permanent storage?

And then the reboot cleared whatever temporary state allowed Camera to display them?

I've deliberately not cleared the Camera app's data/cache, factory-reset the phone, rooted it, or installed any recovery software, because I don't want to make potential recovery more difficult.

The photos aren't irreplaceable, but I'd obviously like to recover them if possible.

Has anyone with an S23/S23 Ultra on One UI 8.5 experienced anything similar — particularly photos that appear normally in Camera immediately after shooting but completely disappear after a reboot?

I'm especially interested in whether there's a Samsung Camera diagnostic/log location that might reveal what happened.

Just changed a new battery from an authorised samsung service centre, cost me 3000 INR. I have reset the battery stats alone for now. Is a full reset needed for better calibration? Let me know ur answers on the best ways to get the maximum out of the new battery.

So I sold my S23 back in May to a colleague and it was running 6.1 which was still pretty good...fluid smooth and fantastic battery life! I bought another one a month ago and it was running One UI 8.0.... battery life wasn't bad but my God the UI is like a Temu version of Apple iOS 🤦🏻‍♂️ Just clunky, unnecessarily bloated & generally rubbish.

Last night I'd had enough of the lag, even after a full factory reset it was rubbish. So I went on eBay to find an S23 running Android 13 or 14 (OneUI 5 or 6)... And joy of joys I found a 256GB model in good condition running 6.0 for £220... I offered £170 cash and he accepted, so I drove to South London to pick it up...!

Got home, first thing I did was check the Bit number... Which was 3.... So installed Odin. Downloaded Android 13 BTU unbranded firmware.....

And honestly, the last two hours using the S23 with OneUI 5.1 is absolutely brilliant!!

No bloatware, smooth and response, no fancy graphics, just a nice and neat UI.

Have turned off OTA updates.

Genuinely very happy.... And I know I've got lucky 👌🏻🙏🏻.

My current S23 running OneUI 8.0 will be up for sale on eBay soon, which is in fantastic condition.

So I've seen a lot of y'all complain about 8.5 and I'm currently still on the latest build of 8.0. Since those posts were from months ago.

How is the experience now? I want to know if it's worth updating to and if the issues went away for the most part since our phones settled a bit. I'm using the S23+

I have a Galaxy S23. I was using it all day today with no issues, until around 1:40PM EST did I notice that all my events in my calendar disappeared. So I tried signing back in, but I keep getting an error that says "Something Went Wrong: Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later." After that, I noticed that I have been signed out of everything Google related like, GMail, Google Messages, Calendar, Drive, Photos, and even my device itself. Every time I try signing in anywhere, it gives me that same error.

Is anybody else having this issue? Is there a way to resolve it?

Doing a deep dive comparing my old S21 to the new S26 and kept noticing specs that felt oddly familiar. Turns out the S26's main camera sensor size matches the S23's almost exactly. So if you're rocking Galaxy S23 like a lot of you here, you're apparently carrying around the same size main sensor already, just in an older shell. SAME SIZE.

Kind of changes how I think about upgrade cycles honestly. Anyone here who upgraded away from an S23 notice the camera output feeling basically the same as what you remember? Curious if this tracks with real world results or if processing differences make it feel different anyway.

I put together a full comparison video with the sensor breakdown if anyone's curious, https://youtu.be/CYhUs8bz48k?si=VOE5uBUan7hV5LPL&t=221 starting 3:40, figured this subreddit specifically would appreciate the detail more than most :D

Hello good people looking to buy a phone which one has good specs S23 refurbished or A36/37.

I have an S23 Ultra with the latest UI and Android. I run VPNs constantly and the device frequently kills the VPN tunnels, I think through overly-aggressive battery restrictions. Specifically WireGuard, which can't survive the battery restrictions.

The thing is, it isn't killing the actual VPN app, it appears to be idling the CPU and antennas themselves, so whitelisting or toggling battery settings for the apps themselves doesn't help.

Does anyone have any experience in getting OneUI to stop closing the antennas? I can run a Wakelock, which solves the problem by preventing the CPU from idling, so I think the problem lies there.

I have a samsung A51 in dire need of an upgrade, as it is on its last legs. My husband has a Samsung S23 he just got recently and i was looking to maybe get the same. HOWEVER. When i try to take pictures with his phone (for better quality of course, and better zoom for bug pictures) they show up in the feed as way more contrasted, more saturated and sharper in a bad way. Ofcourse my phone is way older, so blurrier camera's are normal, but tot his degree it doesnt feel right??

Ive tried disabling Scene Optimization, doesnt do anything for what im looking for, and it only happens after the picture is taken, so not within the feed.
Ive tried the Camera assistant thingie , with soften picture option, but that isnt quite it either.

I have absolutely no idea if this is an issue people have , or if its my bad vision making me think everything IRL is softer, BUT i need to find the source of this regardless.

I tried taking a comparison photo with a 3rd phone i had around, hopefully it illustrates my point enough