Samsung is now expected to hold its Galaxy S23 Unpacked event in 'early February'
We interrupt our regularly scheduled in-depth Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022 coverage for a hot new report out of South Korea focusing on a highly anticipated family of ultra-premium smartphones that's likely to top a lot of holiday shopping lists a year from now at irresistible prices.
Until then, of course, the Galaxy S23 trio of iPhone 14-rivaling Android powerhouses needs to, well, actually see daylight, which some overly optimistic Samsung fans and so-called "leakers" initially expected to happen this year.
That's no longer the most plausible theory (if it ever was), with two similarly trustworthy sources calling for a much more "normal" launch schedule in the last few weeks.
Don't save the date just yet!
That's obviously because there is no firm date to save at the moment and it's clearly going to be a while until Samsung confirms the exact timing of its S23 series announcement. If the latest rumors are to be trusted, there's a good chance the company itself doesn't know precisely when its next big Unpacked event will take place right now.
After all, February is still more than two months away, which means Galaxy S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra production has either not started yet or is in an extremely early stage. A lot of things can thus still go wrong before the three bad boys are deemed ready for primetime, so it's certainly not wise to take any dates for granted even if you see them speculated by the most reliable tipsters with the best track records in the industry.
While decidedly vague, an "early February" target reportedly set for the undoubtedly glamorous San Francisco unveiling of Samsung's next hero devices has a great shot of ultimately materializing, more or less lining up with the February 9 announcement of the Galaxy S22 family last year.
The San Francisco venue is naturally not etched in stone yet either while sounding very plausible, and the same goes for the slightly more specific rumor of an S23 launch timing in the "first week" of February today. Because that latter tidbit clashes with the February 17 date approximated earlier this month by another Korean publication, you should continue to treat everything with a healthy dose of skepticism and an unhealthy amount of salt in hand.
When will the Galaxy S23 roster actually reach its earliest adopters?
For the umpteenth time, the short answer to that question (and others in a similar vein) is we don't know and we have no way to know. But we can definitely try to guess assuming that Samsung will hold its first Unpacked shindig of 2023, say, on February 2 or 3, which are the month's first Wednesday and Thursday respectively.
Given that the Galaxy S22, S22+, and S22 Ultra went on sale a little over two weeks after their formal announcement, the S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra could be commercially released on Friday, February 17, 2023.
Don't expect to be able to get your hands on the S23 Ultra (rendered here) anytime soon.
That's certainly a bit late for a trio of super-flagships many predicted would arrive early to help Samsung offset the modest success of the S22 lineup and the general struggles of the smartphone market as a whole. Of course, the tech giant could always go back to the days of late February unveilings and March releases, so compared to that, the Galaxy S23 family will in fact make a relatively early debut... if this rumor and our guesswork both prove accurate.
A slightly longer preparation than initially forecasted by some sources may also allow Samsung to spend more time refining the already leaked designs of the Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and S23 Ultra, and perhaps more importantly, improving the performance of key new components like that potentially game-changing 200MP camera we've heard so much about in the last couple of months.
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