Take a look at the battery recharging speed of the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE, and find out how its two refresh rate options affect battery life!
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Refresh Rate Affects Battery Life!
The new Samsung Galaxy S23 FE offers two refresh rate options (Settings > Display > Motion smoothness) for its display:
- Adaptive : Get smoother animation and scrolling by automatically adjusting your screen refresh rate up to 120 Hz
- Standard : Get longer battery life with a 60 Hz screen refresh rate
By default, the Galaxy S23 FE uses the Adaptive mode for smoother graphics, but you can choose to switch to the Standard mode for a longer battery life.
On investigation, I found that the Galaxy S23 FE’s display only switches between the 60 Hz and 120 Hz refresh rate, when set to the Adaptive mode.
In the next section, we will look at how the two refresh rate options affect the Galaxy S23 FE’s battery life.
Recommended : Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Unboxing + First Impressions!
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Battery Life Comparison!
The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE comes with a larger 4,500 mAh battery, which is 15% larger than the 3,900 mAh battery in the Galaxy S23!
To test its battery life, we turned off Automatic Brightness, fix the brightness level, and make sure the screen brightness does not change as the ambient brightness changes.
We also set its display brightness to 50%, which is slightly higher than the average indoor brightness level of 40% during the day.
We then ran the PCMark Work 3.0 battery life test until its battery capacity dropped to 20% several times, and this was the best result we obtained with the Standard and Adaptive refresh rates :
Not bad! The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE lasted almost 10.5 hours with the Adaptive refresh mode enabled, and almost lasted 11 hours with the Standard refresh mode!
In other words – it does not make (battery) sense to switch to the Standard refresh mode. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in battery life.
Let’s compare its battery life at 60 Hz and 120 Hz, against the Z Flip5, S23 Ultra, and S22 Ultra smartphones.
Standard Refresh Rate (60 Hz)
The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE naturally has the best battery life with the refresh rate set to 60 Hz (Standard) – lasting just under 11 hours.
As this comparison shows, the Galaxy S23 FE isn’t quite as efficient as Samsung’s flagship devices like the Z Flip5, S23 Ultra, and S22 Ultra. But it’s close enough.
| Work 3.0 | S23 Ultra | S22 Ultra |
Z Flip 5 | S23 FE |
| Battery Capacity | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 3,700 mAh | 4,500 mAh |
| Battery Life | 15 hrs 18 mins | 14 hrs 15 mins | 11 hrs 4 mins | 10 hrs 57 mins |
| Utilisation per min. |
4.36 mAh | 4.68 mAh | 4.46 mAh | 5.48 mAh |
Adaptive Refresh Rate (120 Hz)
But its Adaptive refresh rate is surprisingly so efficient, it actually uses (slightly) less power than the Galaxy S23 Ultra, and Galaxy Z Flip5 smartphones. With a slightly larger battery, it actually lasted more than an hour longer than the Galaxy Z Flip5!
In fact, it’s so efficient that it almost matches the battery life of the S22 Ultra, which has a 28% larger battery!
Needless to say – we are highly recommending you stick with the Adaptive refresh mode for the Galaxy S23 FE!
| Work 3.0 | S23 Ultra | S22 Ultra | S23 FE | Z Flip 5 |
| Battery Capacity | 5,000 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 4,500 mAh | 3,700 mAh |
| Battery Life | 13 hrs 0 mins |
10 hrs 38 mins |
10 hrs 20 mins | 9 hrs 9 mins |
| Utilisation per min. |
5.13 mAh | 6.27 mAh | 5.81 mAh | 5.39 mAh |
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Battery Recharging Speed!
The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE supports up to 45 watts of wired fast charging, but unfortunately, does not come with the charger in-the-box.
So we tested it using the standard 15 watt and 25 watt Samsung fast chargers that shipped with their previous smartphones, which is what we believe most users will end up doing.
| Work 3.0 | S22 Ultra | S23 FE | S23 Ultra | S23 FE | Z Flip 5 | Z Flip 5 |
| Battery Capacity | 5,000 mAh | 4,500 mAh | 5,000 mAh | 4,500 mAh | 3,700 mAh | 3,700 mAh |
| Charger Output | 15 watts | 25 watts | 15 watts | 15 watts | 25 watts | 15 watts |
| Battery Life | 64.5 min | 73 min | 88.8 min | 96 min | 105 min | 129.5 min |
| Recharging Speed (per minute) |
62.0 mAh | 49.3 mAh | 45.0 mAh | 37.5 mAh | 28.2 mAh | 22.9 mAh |
Not bad! The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE charges really fast with a 15 watt charger, and even faster with a 25 watt charger. It basically needs just over 1.5 hours to fully recharge with a 15 watt charger, and just under one hour and 15 minutes with a 25 watt charger.
This gives us a battery life to recharging time ratio of about 6.5:1, which is pretty good. You get about an hour’s worth of battery life for every 9.25 minutes you recharge.
If you prefer to get faster charging, you should purchase the optional 25 watt USB-C super fast charger. It will cut your charging time by 23 minutes, and give you an hour of battery life for every 8.5 minutes you recharge:
- Buy in US : Charger only | Charger + cable
- Buy in UK : Charger + cable | Charger + cable
- Buy in SG : Charger only | Charger only | Charger only
- Buy in MY : Charger only | Charger only | Charger only
Samsung Galaxy S23 Fan Edition Price + Availability
The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE comes with colour options of Mint, Lavender, Gray and Silver, with two exclusive colours on their website – Tangerine and Indigo. They are all offered with two RAM and storage options:
- 6 GB + 128 GB
- 8 GB + 256 GB
These are the available models and launch prices for the Galaxy S23 FE :
- 8 GB + 128 GB : RM2,999 (approx. US$633 / £519 / A$998)
- 8 GB + 256 GB : RM3,299 (approx. US$699 / £571 / A$1,098)
Here are some online purchase options for the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE:
- United States : Amazon | Amazon
- United Kingdom : Amazon
- Australia : Amazon | Amazon |Amazon
- Malaysia : Shopee | Shopee
Recommended : How To Setup Galaxy S23 FE For The First Time!
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
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