The Galaxy S23 FE came out in October 2023. It carries a lot of essential features from the more expensive Galaxy S23 but trims down some aspects of the hardware to bring the price down. Depending on your region, the S23 FE uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or the Exynos 2200 (new 4nm node).
The S23 FE also features better cameras than the S21 FE. Since it’s part of the S23 lineup, it’s getting many of the Galaxy AI features that Samsung announced at Galaxy Unpacked in January 2024. Samsung confirmed that most of these features will also make it to the S23 lineup.
The S23 FE’s chipset is more than capable of running Galaxy AI features. However, what makes it odd is that the S22 series also runs the Exynos 2200 or the 8 Gen 1. There’s no valid explanation for why the S22 series doesn’t have confirmation for AI features since there are no hardware limitations and Samsung artificially limits features.
That aside, the One UI 6.1 brings a lot of quality changes apart from Galaxy AI. It brings new and smoother animations to One UI 6. It removes the Gaussian Blur effect in favor of a dramatic wallpaper motion, and the animations are finally interruptible and non-linear. It’s continuous and finally right up with the other skins in smoothness.
There are also changes to the lock screen and more customization. You can also do AI generative wallpapers now. You always get a new AOD option to show a dimmed version of your wallpaper. All your lockscreen widgets will make their way to the AOD.
According to a post from Tarun Vats on X, a new build of One UI 6.1 has been updated on the server for the Galaxy S23 FE. They were spotted at internal test servers. This testing build was on the Checkfirm platform. This is the newest build for any Samsung phone. The build numbers are S711BXXU2CXAG/ S711BOXM2CXAG/ S711BXXU2CXAG.
Samsung is actively testing One UI 6.1 for the S23 FE. We can expect it to roll out very soon. Tests are currently ongoing for the A54, A53, S22, and S23 lineup and their tablets.
