Samsung had finally launched the Galaxy S23 FE earlier this week, and while it did come with a number of choice upgrades like better cameras and dropping the plastic chassis, the Korean giant were a little coy when it came to what’s inside. They had confirmed that the Galaxy S23 FE in the US at least were powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, but on the Samsung Malaysia product page, it merely listed an ‘octa-core processor’ which was understood, but had not yet been confirmed as the Exynos 2200.
As spotted by the folks over at Lowyat.net though, it seems that Samsung Malaysia has now quietly updated the product page for the Galaxy S23 FE, confirming that Malaysia will indeed be getting the one powered by their own Exynos 2200 system-on-chip. While the actual spec sheet itself still says an ‘octa-core’ processor type only, listed among the features tab is the following disclaimer: “**Galaxy S23 FE features the Exynos 2200. Additional specifications are located at the bottom of this page.”
Despite supposed being a ‘Fan Edition’ smartphone, the Exynos 2200 is certainly not the one most Malaysians would’ve wanted under the hood of the Galaxy S23 FE. The Exynos 2200 does have some decent specs on paper, with a main Cortex-X2 prime core supplemented by three Cortex-A710 performance cores and four more Cortex-A510 efficiency cores, with an Xclipse 920 GPU that was co-engineered with AMD. However, it was plagued with issues during its development cycle, and when it made its full debut had plenty of performance and thermal issues. Samsung even relegated it to only select markets, opting to go with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 instead to power the Galaxy S22 series in most regions.
It ends up being a somewhat major negative in what is otherwise a rather solid smartphone. The Galaxy S23 FE comes with a decently-sized 6.4-inch, FHD+ AMOLED display capable of a 120Hz refresh rate, has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on both the front and back of the phone and has an IP68 dust and water resistance rating too. Samsung also upgraded the camera department here, with a main 50MP shooter flanked by a 12MP ultrawide and an 8MP telephoto shooter. Being a Samsung device also means a solid software support policy, with up to 5 years of security updates.
The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE will be available for purchase from 10 October onwards, with a starting price of RM2,999. For more about the Galaxy S23 FE, you can check out our previous coverage of it here.
