Recently, I shared with you our unboxing and first impressions of the itel S23+. Now, let’s check if it’s good and worth it.
Display and Multimedia
For sure, you are interested in itel S23+ because of its display. If you didn’t know, this phone boasts a 6.78-inch Curved AMOLED display with FHD+ resolution which we rarely see for a phone in this price range. Expect a color-accurate and bright display since its high-quality display supports 99% DCI P3 color gamut and up to 500nit max brightness.
With that, watching videos and editing is really enjoyable on this phone. Its display brings experience to another level. But the lack of a high refresh rate feature is one of the drawbacks for me. For me, a high refresh rate even just a minimum of 90Hz is the new standard today. But this phone is really cheap so it’s okay.
It’s just that, it doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack so I recommend that you also buy a USB-C dongle if you prefer wired earphones. Again, it comes with wired earphones that are USB-C but for sure the audio quality is not very good, although I haven’t tried it. It turns out that the sound of its stereo speaker is not good, but when it comes to volume, it is loud.
Camera
One of the things I like about this phone is its camera. Its image quality is not top of the line, but because the quality of its display is good, the pictures we can get also look nice and vibrant. If you look at the pictures on another phone, of course, the quality will be different, especially the color.
This phone has a 50MP main shooter, a 0.08MP depth sensor, and a 32MP selfie camera. The camera modes that it has are Short Video, Beauty, Super Night, Portrait, Ultra HD, AR Shot, Panorama, Time-lapse, and Pro.
For video, it can shoot up to 1080p@30fps on both the rear and front cameras. Both also support the ultra-steady feature which delivers decent stabilization.
Here are some of itel S23+ camera samples:
Performance
As for the performance, I was also a little surprised by its power because I thought it would struggle a bit. It has a 12nm Unisoc Tiger T616 chipset with a Mali-G57 MP1 GPU and is paired with 8GB RAM and 256GB internal storage. Although it’s not very smooth, it’s still good after all. The result we got from our benchmarks is just right. In AnTuTu, it got a score of 249,560, while in PCMark Work 3.0 it got a score of 7,924.
Just don’t expect the same performance as the TECNO POVA 5. We know that its focus is not really on performance, and based on my experience here, it is really decent and can run the casual apps that we use especially for browsing social media.
In gaming, you may experience frame drops since the chipset is a bit low. But I was surprised, it supported Ultra graphics in ML. But of course, it will be more laggy especially when you set it to ultra graphics. I suggest, just setting the graphics and frame to Medium-High to avoid frame drops.
Unfortunately, the only max supported graphics settings in Call of Duty Mobile are medium graphics and high frame rate but so far, it’s enjoyable to play here even if there are a few frame drops. I didn’t attempt try to play Genshin Impact here because for sure it’s too laggy.
Battery
Even if it only has a 5,000mAh battery capacity, expect a longer battery life especially if you enable the dark mode since it has an AMOLED display. In my usage, its battery life is long enough even though I also play some games in my spare time. The result we got in the PCMark battery benchmark was 12 hours and 33 minutes battery life. This is long compared to OPPO A58 and TECNO POVA 5 Pro.
In this benchmark, we set it screen brightness to 50%. Having a 5,000mAh battery capacity instead of a bigger 6,000mAh and up is also an advantage for me because it only supports 18W wired charging which can be considered slow compared to 33W and up charging technology.
Conclusion
This itel S23+ is one of the game changers in this price range. It has a good display and camera. If you want a Curved AMOLED display with corning gorilla glass 5 and an in-display fingerprint scanner, this phone is for you. Besides, the image quality you can get with its 50MP camera setup as well as the 32MP selfie camera is also good. Its camera is also fine even though this phone is cheap. But if you buy this phone, you may be concerned about performance, particularly in gaming. Overall, this phone is still worth it.
Itel S23+ Specifications
- Display: 6.78-inch Curved AMOLED, FHD+ 2460 x 1080 resolution
- CPU: 2.0GHz 12nm UNISOC T616 octa-core processor
- GPU: Mali-G57 MC1
- RAM: 8GB + Up to 8GB Virtual RAM
- ROM: 256GB
- Rear Camera: 50MP + 0.08MP Depth sensor + LED flash
- Front Camera: 32MP
- Battery: 5,000mAh, 18W wired charging
- OS: itelOS 13, Android 13
- Connectivity: 2.4GHz & 5GHz WiFi, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS, dual SIM (nano)
- Sensors: Accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, gyroscope, sound, magnetic
- Colors: Lake Cyan, Elemental Blue
- Others: In-display fingerprint sensor, face unlock, USB-C
Price and Availability
itel S23+ – PHP 7,499 | Shopee link
You can now buy the itel S23+ on itel’s official store on Shopee for only PHP 7,499. Also, allot a budget for a charging adapter if you don’t have one.
