Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus hardware defect causing blurry photos, complaints say

It's not uncommon for new smartphones to have issues and most of them are usually software glitches. That unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case with the Samsung Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus. The phones seem to have a faulty main lens, resulting in blurry images.

Many Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus users say they have noticed banana or ring-shaped blurs in pictures taken from the phones. Basically, some parts of the images appear blurry and out of focus.

This is most noticeable in pictures with text, though that doesn't mean other images are immune to the issue. If you are not too particular about image quality, you may not notice these issues, but if you look closely, some portions of the images are definitely blurry and not as sharp as the other parts.

The issue first cropped up in German tech forums and the number of complaints is growing. Reddit, XDA forums, and Samsung community boards are filled with posts about the problem.

Photos taken by the Galaxy S23 and S23+ are blurry in some places

Notebookcheck says that their Galaxy S23 Plus also has this problem. The pictures also came out blurry in the RAW mode, which lets you access uncompressed image data straight from the sensor, which led them to conclude that this is not a software side problem.

Folks at SamMobile say that they were able to replicate the issue on their Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus units, but only images of text and documents had issues.

I agree that it is field curvature but in the shown cases it is asymmetric and that emphasizes the problem. It is very prominent on one side and barely noticable on the other side. Maybe de-centered lens. ... and while it is a common phenomenon I did not see this on the Pixel 7, Samsung A52S or iPhone I checked. Which means Samsung is just not able to control it."-Reddit user Sedazin

It appears that most of the affected units were manufactured in Vietnam, which is where the bulk of Samsung phones are manufactured, but some Indian and South Korean units also have the issue.

Some Galaxy S22 owners said last year that the pictures the phone produced were blurred at the edges, but that issue was fixable in settings and didn't affect a significant number of users.

Don't confuse it with the edge blur of the S22. with the S23, the blur is banana-shaped around the center. that is something completely different. Here the lenses are probably not good. Photographing documents sharply is almost impossible. it is also noticeable in detailed landscape pictures. the pictures are almost all worse than with my old S10e. the S23's automatic photo correction destroys each image to correct the blur." - Reddit user Heinzi647578

It looks like something is wrong with the lens on the 50MP primary unit. It's either of poor quality or slightly tilted. Samsung is yet to comment on the issue and if this turns out to be a hardware defect, affected users may have to get their camera module replaced. Samsung is said to be preparing a huge camera update for the Galaxy S23 series though, so there is a little sliver of hope that the problem will be fixed.