Hardcore Samsung fans and Android power users on relatively tight budgets have been waiting for a sequel to the belated Galaxy S21 FE for almost two years now, and at long last, the Galaxy S23 FE (not S22 FE) is up for grabs and shipping in the US.
Officially priced at $599.99 stateside with the same “premium” Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor under the hood as the Galaxy S22 family (not the rest of the S23 series), the 6.4-inch handset appears to go up against Google’s “vanilla” Pixel 8 and the Motorola Edge (2023) rather than the likes of the Pixel 8 ProEdge Plus (2023), or OnePlus 11.
Free gift cards and discounted buds for all!
To help boost the appeal of this new “budget flagship” from Samsung, Amazon and Best Buy are doing what they do best starting today and what they’ve done for multiple other recently released Galaxy devices. Much like the Tab S9, Tab S9+, Tab S9 FE, Tab S9 FE+, and even the Galaxy Buds FE, the unlocked Galaxy S23 FE 5G is discounted right off the bat with no special requirements and no strings attached.
Of course, nothing is ever that simple in life, so instead of being able to lower the aforementioned base price of the new high-end smartphone, early adopters are technically looking at saving 100 bucks on future Amazon or Best Buy purchases.
That’s because the two retailers are bundling both the 128 and 256GB storage configurations of the 5G-enabled S23 Fan Edition with a complimentary $100 gift card. Not quite as attractive as an outright discount on the device itself, this still represents a very nice deal sweetener for an already strong candidate for the title of best budget 5G phone out there.
Even better, Amazon will also sell you the Galaxy S23 FE together with a $49.99 pair of brand-new noise-cancelling Galaxy Buds FE in addition to the aforementioned gratis gift card if you’re interested in such a bundle, thus allowing you to take your savings all the way up to 150 bucks in total.
Curiously enough, Samsung’s official US e-store is unable to match these undeniably awesome Amazon launch promotions, merely offering trade-in credits that cap off at a rather modest $300 and even more bizarrely listing the unlocked Galaxy S23 FE at $629.99 and $689.99 prices in 128 and 256 gig variants respectively instead of $599.99 and $659.99.
Should you get the Galaxy S23 Fan Edition?
As you can imagine, that’s a complicated question that we just cannot answer in a simple and “universal” way. For starters, the competition is incredibly tough, with the aforementioned non-Pro Pixel 8 costing $700 and up, which obviously makes the S23 FE look good and affordable, but the “regular” Motorola Edge (2023) fetching $500 as part of a US launch deal of its own with no gift cards or anything else of that sort involved.
Then there’s the question of internal competition if you will, as the S23 FE happens to look extremely similar to the Galaxy A54 5G at first glance. Samsung’s early 2023-released mid-ranger is of course significantly humbler under the hood compared to the newest member of the Galaxy S23 family, but it also costs a lot less money, normally going for $450 and very often scoring discounts of $50 or even $100 of late.
