Major rumor calls for Samsung to bring out the Galaxy S23 FE later this year

According to South Korea's Hankooki (via SamMobile), the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE (Fan Edition) will be released sometime during the second half of this year. This comes after Samsung decided to skip the Galaxy S22 FE last year because of the weak global economy and the chip shortage. While the Galaxy S20 FE was a big hit selling over 10 million units, the Galaxy S21 FE carried a higher price tag and as a result, it didn't do as well as its predecessor.

The report out of Korea says that Samsung will basically replace the Galaxy A74 mid-range handset this year with the Galaxy S23 FE to avoid cannibalization. The latter model might also end up released in more countries than the Galaxy S21 FE which was released in some Asian markets, Europe, and the U.S. Sammy's hope is that by skipping the Galaxy A74, sales of the Galaxy S23 FE might do better than the previous FE release.

The rumor mill has spit out one possibility for the Galaxy S23 FE related to the chipset that might power the device. Instead of the Exynos 2300, we could see the phone equipped with either the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset or the Galaxy 8+ Gen 1 SoC. The former is the same Application Processor (AP) that will drive the soon-to-be-released Galaxy S23 line and includes an overclocked high-performance ARM X-3 CPU core.

The idea to produce an FE handset actually started with Samsung's biggest smartphone failure, the Galaxy Note 7. It was a gorgeous-looking handset and Samsung forecast huge sales of the phone. But problems with the handset's battery caused several phones to explode forcing Samsung to recall all units. A second model was released but these phones also suffered the same fate.

To prove that the issue with the Galaxy Note 7 was the faulty battery and nothing else, about a year after the Note 7 was first released, Samsung produced the Galaxy Note Fan Edition which was a revamped Galaxy Note 7 with a non-exploding battery. The Galaxy Note 8 was still released just a few weeks later.

The last FE model released, the Galaxy S21 FE, carried a 6.4-inch display with a 1080 x 2340 FHD+ resolution. Under the hood was the Snapdragon 888 SoC with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The triple camera setup on the back included a 12MP main camera, an 8MP Telephoto camera with a 3x optical zoom, and a 12MP Ultra-wide camera. The front-facing camera weighed in at 32MP.

The Galaxy S21 FE came with a 4500mAh battery charging at 25W (wired) and 15W (wireless). It also offered reverse wireless charging allowing users to turn the back of their phone into a wireless charging pad to charge other phones and the compatible charging cases belonging to some true wireless earbuds. The device carried an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.