40K+ Should I switch from iPhone 13 to S23 or S24 ?

mayank4823

mayank4823

Forerunner
Why I’m thinking of the switch
1. Samsung website is offering me 39k for my 2 year old iPhone 13 if I buy the S24. Claiming GST and applying some coupon will cost me 35k approx after the trade in.
2. Fedup of iOS and average night camera. I used to have a Pixel and that has spoiled me. I trek and travel quite often and star gazing is below average on iPhone 13.
3. I paid around 45-50k for iPhone 13 2 years back because I claimed GST and used bank offers and what not. So getting 39k for it too tempting.

What i’m worried about
1. Battery. iPhone is great when it comes to battery optimisation.
2. Exynos on S24. I’ve heard S23 is a better choice.
3. I really need that lock folder option which is there in iOS. Have some very sensitive pics related to business and some private pics as well. *wink wink*.


Considering everything above, is the switch from iPhone 13 to S23 an upgrade ?
 
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CrimeMouse said:
Installed iOS 18. First thing I notice- The padding between UI elements is doubled. Hmm. Open Language and Region, turns out they added हिन्दी to it.
Do they think we all speak it?
&
The control centre is somehow worse.
&
God, the photos app, it’s so goofy now.
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Photos app is really cluttered now. Have to really spend some time and add some customizations to get it to work.
Control Center, I really liked this design as I can now keep it less cluttered by moving less used controls to different page. Give it some time and you will get used to it.
Home Screen customizations : meh. Not even going to use those odd color palettes. Never really bothered about keeping icons here and there and leave empty spaces in home screen. I follow single home screen layout.
iPhone mirroring : The best and most underrated feature. Helps a lot in cases where I have to use phone and Mac at same time. Best use case is when I have to type long sentences in app that is only available in my phone.
At least the 15pm is getting new Siri and AI. For wife's iPhone 13, its just a waste.
CrimeMouse said:
Also, if the S24 came with Snapdragon I would have pounced on it 5 months back.

As usual Samsung is doing everything in their power to gimp their own product. Common Smasnug L.
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mayank4823 said:
I was leaning towards S24 as well. They were offering insane exchange value for iPhones. The existence of Exynos made me stay away from Samsung.
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The leaks/rumours show the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 barely 200 points behind the A18 Pro in single-core and comfortably ahead in multi-core.

Still Samsung will probably use Exynos to make their devices not *too* enticing! God forbid the Galaxy has every possible advantage!

Anecdote- Ten years ago I distinctly remember walking into a park and seeing multiple people with Galaxy S5s. Nowadays I rarely see a Galaxy S phone. The number of ratings on Amazon for the S24 is evidence enough.
 
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CrimeMouse said:
The leaks/rumours show the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 barely 200 points behind the A18 Pro in single-core and comfortably ahead in multi-core.

Still Samsung will probably use Exynos to make their devices not *too* enticing! God forbid the Galaxy has every possible advantage!

Anecdote- Ten years ago I distinctly remember walking into a park and seeing multiple people with Galaxy S5s. Nowadays I rarely see a Galaxy S phone. The number of ratings on Amazon for the S24 is evidence enough.
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s25 series is confirmed to use SD exclusively and I wouldn't really care about mobile benchmarks, you'll never hit peak perf without getting throttled like crazy, I'd rather have a less power consuming chip than a faster one
 
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Heisen said:
I wish Sony would bring back the Xperia series. Those phones represent a class of their own compared to other Android phones.
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Sony's mobile department really sucks, their pricing was atrocious even back in those days, but their UI was something else, I used my Xperia Tipo as a portable music player for years before its battery just gave up, Even now, their Xperia 1 VI while technically having the best smartphone camera in any segment takes crappy photos, and while I get it its geared towards photography pros, how hard is it to add an auto mode for normal peeps, specially since the hardware is already there?

but anyways, Xperia and Zenfone had some of the best software back in those days. I really enjoying using them both
 
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mayank4823 said:
Why I’m thinking of the switch
1. Samsung website is offering me 39k for my 2 year old iPhone 13 if I buy the S24. Claiming GST and applying some coupon will cost me 35k approx after the trade in.
2. Fedup of iOS and average night camera. I used to have a Pixel and that has spoiled me. I trek and travel quite often and star gazing is below average on iPhone 13.
3. I paid around 45-50k for iPhone 13 2 years back because I claimed GST and used bank offers and what not. So getting 39k for it too tempting.

What i’m worried about
1. Battery. iPhone is great when it comes to battery optimisation.
2. Exynos on S24. I’ve heard S23 is a better choice.
3. I really need that lock folder option which is there in iOS. Have some very sensitive pics related to business and some private pics as well. *wink wink*.


Considering everything above, is the switch from iPhone 13 to S23 an upgrade ?
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A15 is coming with private space feature, I'm sure samsung will bring it with added features on their oneui update
 
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Samsungs not so good with battery optimisations aswell.. my year old 14 pro used to give me atleast 50% more battery day to day compared to my fold6.. I know fold6 im using a bigger screen and stuff.. but im finding its the idle drain and not the screen which is consuming the most battery.

expect slightly better from a S24 ultra on battery life (4400 vs 5000) but iPhones are still way far ahead when it comes to battery optimisations.

and dont even bother wth the base variants.. i will never buy a exynos phone again.. after having used S8, S9, Pixel 6a and even got to use the S23 base variant for a while.. battery life was absolutely trash on the S23 even tho it had a snapdragon i think.
 
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altair21 said:
s25 series is confirmed to use SD exclusively and I wouldn't really care about mobile benchmarks, you'll never hit peak perf without getting throttled like crazy, I'd rather have a less power consuming chip than a faster one
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Huge if true.

Completely agree with you on the less power thing.

Looking at the efficiency curve chart by Geekerwan, the Exynos 2400 is worse than the 8 Gen 3 at all power levels. Moreover the modem is crap and heats the phone up too much. Indian temperatures make this worse.
 
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enc0dex264 said:
battery life was absolutely trash on the S23 even tho it had a snapdragon i think.
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This is wrong, base s23 has the one of best standby time. I do wish they provided a bigger battery but it's certainly better than the iPhone 13.
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rockstah said:
This is wrong, base s23 has the one of best standby time. I do wish they provided a bigger battery but it's certainly better than the iPhone 13.
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You can choose to believe what you want.. but im telling you i used a brand new out of the box S23 for a full 2 days and it had the worst battery life of any modern phone i have used.. it would also get way too hot while charging.. i think at the moment i had traded in my iPhone 12 mini and it was worse than that.
 
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enc0dex264 said:
You can choose to believe what you want.. but im telling you i used a brand new out of the box S23 for a full 2 days and it had the worst battery life of any modern phone i have used.. it would also get way too hot while charging.. i think at the moment i had traded in my iPhone 12 mini and it was worse than that.
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thats the issue, you need time to get the battery calibrations in, and if you want to manually calibrate it, let it discharge to 0% and shut down, then let it charge to 100%
 
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enc0dex264 said:
You can choose to believe what you want.. but im telling you i used a brand new out of the box S23 for a full 2 days and it had the worst battery life of any modern phone i have used.. it would also get way too hot while charging.. i think at the moment i had traded in my iPhone 12 mini and it was worse than that.
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Ah there's the issue, it needs a few days to settle. It getting hot while charging goes away too. I'm not saying it has a great battery but it's not trash either, it's pretty average.
 
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mayank4823 said:
Why I’m thinking of the switch
1. Samsung website is offering me 39k for my 2 year old iPhone 13 if I buy the S24. Claiming GST and applying some coupon will cost me 35k approx after the trade in.
2. Fedup of iOS and average night camera. I used to have a Pixel and that has spoiled me. I trek and travel quite often and star gazing is below average on iPhone 13.
3. I paid around 45-50k for iPhone 13 2 years back because I claimed GST and used bank offers and what not. So getting 39k for it too tempting.

What i’m worried about
1. Battery. iPhone is great when it comes to battery optimisation.
2. Exynos on S24. I’ve heard S23 is a better choice.
3. I really need that lock folder option which is there in iOS. Have some very sensitive pics related to business and some private pics as well. *wink wink*.


Considering everything above, is the switch from iPhone 13 to S23 an upgrade ?
Click to expand...
Leaked benchmarks for next year's S25's SOC- https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/qualcomm-snapdragon-8-gen-4-vs-apple-a18-pro
 
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rockstah said:
Ah there's the issue, it needs a few days to settle. It getting hot while charging goes away too. I'm not saying it has a great battery but it's not trash either, it's pretty average.
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Yep, my wife has a 2 month old S23 and the battery life is average. though much better than my 1.5 year old S22(SD version) now.
 
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as a long term android user who was into custom roms few years back, my phone usage is pretty basic now. swtiched to iphone 15 pro last year and would never go back. had the ipad from 5 years and now have watch too, the ecosystem just works.
 
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I switched from iPhone 12 to S23 and nearing 2 years. TBH, its the worst flagship I have ever owned. It performs like a low-mid budget phone.

Camera: lots of noise under low-light, poor macro (can't scan documents well), lacks details under well lit conditions (check the photography thread I posted).

Battery: Below average, lasts about a day with 3hours of screen time. It drop pretty fast while using real time apps like Ola or google maps. A 45min ride saw battery drop by 12%

UI: Gesture based controls are terrible. Example: While editing photos or annotating a PDF document, you'll accidentally exit.

Bloatware: Its minimal, limited to Galaxy store and a few google apps. You can't remove them without ADB tools.

Others: Missing iOS notes app which am yet to find a replacement, Air-tag support, ability to answer calls from iPad while your device is away .

Phone-desktop link: Sync with windows app is very laggy and not usable. I had reflector app for iOS and that worked brilliantly.

Previous iOS devices I use to keep them 3-4years while the S23 I was contemplating for a change within 14-16 months of ownership. For now, am holding off until next year and switch back to iPhone.
 
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kalph09 said:
For now, am holding off until next year and switch back to iPhone.
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The best time to buy is during Flipkart's Diwali sale. By then, the latest model, released in September, will be available, but you purchase the one year old model at a heavily discounted price. A straight 10k discount before any card offers.
 
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