It is not rare for a new smartphone to have problems, the majority of which are caused by software flaws. That does not appear to be the case with the Samsung Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus. The phones appear to have a malfunctioning main lens, which causes hazy photographs.
Numerous Samsung S23 and S23 Plus owners report seeing banana or ring-shaped blurring in photos taken with the phones. Essentially, some of the photographs are hazy and out of focus.
This is particularly obvious in photographs with text, but it does not mean that other images are immune to the problem. If you’re not picky about image quality, you might not notice these flaws, but if you look closely, you’ll realize that some areas of the images are definitely blurry and not as sharp as others.
The problem originally surfaced on German tech forums, and the number of complaints is increasing. Posts about the issue can be found on Reddit, XDA forums, and Samsung community boards.
Notebookcheck reports that the Samsung S23 Plus has the same issue. The images were similarly hazy in RAW mode, which allows you to view uncompressed image data directly from the sensor, leading them to believe that this is not a software issue.
According to SamMobile, they were able to reproduce the issue on their Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus handsets, although only images of text and documents were affected.
The majority of the afflicted units appear to have been made in Vietnam, where the majority of Samsung phones are produced, however, some Indian and South Korean models are also affected. Last year, some Galaxy S22 customers complained that the phone’s images were blurry around the edges, but the problem was easily fixed in settings and didn’t affect a large number of users.