Samsung launched its Galaxy S23 series earlier this year as its first flagship in years to ditch Exynos chips and instead use Qualcomm Snapdragon on a global scale. Apparently, though, the Galaxy S23 FE will do the exact opposite, using Exynos in every region, including the United States.

The Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and S23 Ultra are all built on top of a special version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that’s specific to Samsung. The chip is used globally, where in years past Samsung would have only used Snapdragon chips in regions such as Korea, the United States, and a few others. Elsewhere, such as in Europe, Samsung has usually left its users with Exynos chips, often leading to tons of problems with software glitches, overheating, or worse.

Samsung is largely expected to stick with this Snapdragon-only model for the foreseeable future, but that won’t apply to all devices.

it seems the former is true, according to what we’re hearing: Samsung really is planning to launch a Galaxy S23 FE, and it will arrive sometime in the fourth quarter of 2023. And it could have a surprise in store, one that may or may not make you happy.

SamMobile reports that the Galaxy S23 FE is, firstly, actually happening.

SamMobile also claims that the Galaxy S23 FE will arrive with a 50MP primary camera, 4,500 mAh battery, and a base model with 128GB of storage, with 256GB as an optional upgrade.

Apparently, the more affordable device is slated for release in Q4 of this year, which puts it ahead of schedule compared to the last “Fan Edition” release, with the Galaxy S21 FE having launched in January 2022 (mere weeks before the Galaxy S22 series). This was previously reported in February.

But, more interestingly, Samsung is apparently planning to ship the Galaxy S23 FE exclusively with an Exynos chip. Specifically, this would be the Exynos 2200 which was used in the Galaxy S22 series in some regions, and brought Samsung’s partnership with AMD to the GPU. The chip wasn’t well-received, but it can still certainly get the job done.

Using Exynos on a global scale for the Galaxy S23 FE is certainly a choice with the company having so publicly gone all-in on Qualcomm, but the decision to use the chip in the US has even more of an impact. As it stands today, the only “flagship-tier” smartphones sold in the US with Exynos chips are from Google, technically, as Tensor chips are heavily based on Exynos devices. The last time Samsung sold a flagship with Exynos in the US was with the Galaxy S6 series, which opted for the chips as Qualcomm’s designs were dealing with overheating issues at the time.

Galaxy S23 FE coming with Exynos chip worldwide

The Galaxy S23 series launched earlier this year and is exclusively powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor, but with the Fan Edition, Samsung is apparently going to flip the script: The Galaxy S23 FE will be powered by the Exynos 2200 chip in all markets, including the USA!

the Exynos 2200, the chip that powered the Galaxy S22 series in Europe, will also power the S23 FE from what we’ve heard. The Exynos 2200 was Samsung’s first chip with an AMD GPU and was, if we’re being honest, quite a mess, which is probably why Samsung decided to go all in with Qualcomm for the S23 series.

The Exynos 2200 will be nearly two years old by the time the Galaxy S23 FE makes its debut, so it will hopefully not cause the kind of issues we saw on the Galaxy S22 lineup. In fact, Samsung better make sure that is the case if it is planning to use the chip for the US market, where customers and Samsung fans have been spoiled by Snapdragon chips on high-end Galaxy phones for many years while customers in the rest of the world have suffered the increasingly problematic Exynos chips.

Galaxy S23 FE will bring an upgraded rear camera

Anyway, let’s talk about some other Galaxy S23 FE specs that we have learned about. One of the S23 FE’s biggest upgrades could be a 50MP rear camera. The S20 FE and S21 FE used the same 12MP rear camera as the standard S20 and S21 models, and with Samsung upgrading the main camera to a 50-megapixel sensor on the (non-Ultra) Galaxy S22 and S23, we guess it’s only natural that the S23 FE get the same upgrade.

The S23 FE will come in 128GB and 256GB storage tiers, and we assume there will be 6GB or 8GB of RAM accompanying that storage. We also learned that the S23 FE will have the same 4,500 mAh battery as its predecessors, likely with 25W fast charging (though we won’t say no to Samsung doing a little charity by adding 45W charging support while keeping the price of the phone the same as the S20 FE and S21 FE).

And finally, it seems Samsung is bringing the model numbers for the Galaxy S FE series in line with what it has been using for the flagship S line since last year. The S23 FE will have model number SM-S711x – notice the 7xx series of numbers here is what Samsung also uses for the Galaxy Z Flip lineup, indicating that while these are high-end devices, they aren’t supposed to be considered proper flagships.

While we make sure we only put exclusive information out there if we trust the source, it’s always possible a few details could change by the time the new phone makes it to market. As usual, we’ll keep you updated whenever new information pops up, so stay tuned!