Things are bubbling up in the fan mile. Samsung’s flagships Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+ and Galaxy S23 Ultra, which have been rated quite well in tests so far but cost up to 1,800 Euros, still drastically limit the buyer’s selection of their preferred audio accessories. After getting rid of the 3.5 mm jack, Samsung more or less gently forces customers to use products from its own portfolio.
Alexander Fagot, ? Alexander Fagot, ✓ Anton Avdyushkin (translated by DeepL / Ninh Duy), Published ??
Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author.
Everything looks great for Samsung’s Galaxy S23 series, no matter where you look. The pre-order numbers from South Korea fit into an overall positive picture painted by social media influencers and first testers since the launch on February 1. A better-than-expected camera – especially compared to the European Galaxy S22 Ultra with Exynos chip – extremely good battery runtimes, and finally – Snapdragon in Europe!
But wait, what does actually “full-fledged” mean? According to Qualcomm’s data sheet for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the Galaxy S23 Ultra (available here on Amazon), just like all other flagships with this chip, should already support Bluetooth Low Energy Audio (LE Audio), and the new aptX Lossless Bluetooth codec, not to mention the older aptX Adaptive and aptx HD codecs. For reference, the latter was introduced in early 2016, almost exactly seven years ago!
Still, not a single Samsung flagship – not even the current Galaxy S23 series – supports these two above-mentioned higher-quality aptX versions, thus curtailing the range of compatible Bluetooth headsets. Relatively new to Samsung, on the other hand, is the SSC or Samsung Seamless Codec, which was introduced with the Galaxy Buds2 Pro (available at Amazon from 160 Euro) and promises high-definition 24-bit audio and higher bitrates of up to 2304 kbps but is limited to the new Samsung earbuds.
Samsung restricts the range of compatible headphones
This might be logical from the manufacturer’s point of view, but this decision is not customer-friendly. Countless in-ears on the market sound much worse than necessary due to the lack of aptX Adaptive support on the Galaxy S23, so I miss at least this widely used Qualcomm codec in Samsung’s Galaxy flagships in particular. The future will probably bring a lot of modern headsets with aptX Lossless support, but Samsung does not support this yet either.
Presumably, Samsung saves a few cents per smartphone in license fees – similar to the missing mmWave antennas in Europe – and kills two birds with one stone. LDAC remains the only qualitatively acceptable alternative to Samsung’s SSC, which is fortunately supported by quite a few Bluetooth headphones on the market, but not with all of them. As good as the Galaxy S23 generation might be – Samsung should slowly rethink this practice of building an artificial wall around the Galaxy, otherwise you can go straight to the Apple garden, which Samsung likes to smile at.
As a young tech enthusiast with a history involving assembling and overclocking projects, I ended up working as a projectionist with good old 35-mm films before I entered the computer world at a professional level. I assisted customers at an Austrian IT service provider called Iphos IT Solutions for seven years, working as a Windows client and server administrator as well as a project manager. As a freelancer who travels a lot, I have been able to write for Notebookcheck from all corners of the world since 2016. My articles cover brand-new mobile technologies in smartphones, laptops, and gadgets of all kinds.
Translator: Ninh Duy – Editorial Assistant – 292612 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2008
My main responsibility as an editorial assistant is maintaining the Library section, which aggregates reviews from other publications and channels. In addition, my daily breakfast is Notebookcheck’s long list of new content, which I comb through to select the most interesting topics for translation from English to French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch.”
Alexander Fagot, 2023-03- 5 (Update: 2023-03- 5)
