Are your Samsung Galaxy S23 photos strangely blurry? You aren’t alone

If you love snapping photos with your Samsung Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus you might want to double-check that they aren’t being ruined by some seemingly random blurred spots.

The cameras on Samsung’s S23 and S23 Plus are pretty impressive – we called them “excellent” in our Samsung Galaxy S23 review – featuring a 50MP that trumps the snapper on the iPhone 14. However, a glitch looks to be making some S23 users’ pictures less crisp than they should be.

Initially reported by NotebookCheck (opens in new tab), some odd blur patterns (either shaped like bananas or ring-shaped) have appeared on some images, causing areas that should be in focus to look fuzzy. 

To make matters worse, the images are being taken using the S23’s raw mode – meaning the image comes straight from the sensor and hasn’t been altered by the software at all – which suggests it could be a hardware issue.

Samsung has yet to issue an official statement about the matter, but we’ve asked for comment and will update this story as soon as we hear back. In the meantime, some users have found that manually focusing their S23 cameras can ensure their pictures are free from unwanted blur (via Sammobile (opens in new tab)). 

This means the problem could be resolved by a future camera software update rather than Samsung needing to manually fix the smartphones – with leakers suggesting an update could be coming at the end of March.

A widespread issue?

Thankfully, not every Galaxy S23 phone appears to be affected by this issue, and owners of the souped-up Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra don’t appear to be having issues either. That’s likely because the main camera on that phone uses a different 200MP lens rather than the 50MP found in the regular S23 and Plus. 

That said, we’d recommend that all Galaxy S23 owners (no matter the model) double-check their snaps before moving on from an important photo shoot. At least until Samsung issues some kind of fix for the issue. 

You don’t want to think you’re safe and then find your pics are marred by the blur patterns that have been wreaking havoc for a significant minority of S23 and S23 Plus owners.

Right now, there’s no reason to suspect that this is a serious issue that affects all S23 or S23 Plus phones, and we didn’t encounter the problem during our in-depth testing for both reviews. But if you’re still considering other options, then our guide to the best camera phones ranks all of our current favorite phones for shooting both stills and video.