When you’re spending several hundred dollars on a Samsung Galaxy S23, the last thing you want is a damaged phone right after you buy your phone. But that’s exactly what could happen if you dropped the S23, despite all the durability-boosting features Samsung put in place.
Allstate Protection Plans, which sells insurance for mobile devices, put its entire Galaxy S23 lineup to the test, with a series of drops designed to see how well each model would handle a 6-foot drop onto the pavement. The Drop Bot helped with the testing to ensure consistent drops for all three phones.
Drop tests for all three models included a face-down drop, a backwards-down drop, and a side-down drop. Each test produced very different results for each phone, which you can see in it this video (Opens in a new tab).
The Galaxy S23 came out the worst in Allstate’s drop test, shattering the screen during our face-down drop test and making the phone more or less unusable. The Galaxy S23 Plus did a little better, but it still had a series of cracks along the bottom of the screen — particularly in the lower left corner.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra — the most expensive of the three S23 models — sustained similar damage on top of the S23 Plus, with cracks in the bottom corner and across the curved edge of the screen.
The Galaxy S23 turned out a bit better in our rear drop test, and remained usable, although it still had some serious cracks across the back panel. Meanwhile, the S23 Plus suffered from a few cracks on the top of the back panels and some scuffs on the frame. The Galaxy S23 Ultra came out much worse for wear. While the glass panels only had minor cracks, the ultra-wide camera lens was shattered.
The side drop test is particularly interesting, because the Galaxy S23 escaped with very little damage – it got a few bumps on its frame. The S23 Plus and S23 Ultra both finished the test with smashed front displays. The S23 Ultra came out better than the Plus, and its curved edges suffered from some cracking, but both remained fully functional.
The Galaxy S23 series comes with dual panels of Gorilla Glass Victus 2, the strongest Gorilla Glass ever made, and an “Armor Aluminum” frame that appears to be made of a much stronger alloy. Unfortunately, it seems that these measures are not enough to protect phones from something as simple as a fall.
If anything this test shows how important it is to choose a good case and screen protector for your phone. Fortunately, in addition to our roundups of the best Galaxy S23 screen protectors and the best Galaxy S23 Ultra screen protectors, we also evaluate cases for all three Galaxy S models.
Phone repairs are expensive, as are replacement phones, so you must find a way to protect your device from all the damage the world can inflict.