While the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Galaxy Z Flip 5, Galaxy Watch 6, and Galaxy Tab S9 are certain to appear at this month's Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event, there is one less certain model.

Despite the absence of the S22 FE, the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is said to debut between August and September.

Earlier rumors had suggested that the device would be powered by an Exynos 2200 chipset in all regions, but a version with a Qualcomm chipset has appeared in the Geekbench browser.

The handset in question is labeled SM-S711U1 and is believed to be for the US, while the one with the Exynos 2200 (SM-S711B) is probably for other regions. Both have corresponding placeholder support pages on Samsung's website.

The first model is listed as having a "taro" motherboard, meaning it is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Both have 8 GB RAM.

Neither chip is the latest and greatest, and the Samsung Galaxy S23 has the later Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in all regions. Instead, the S23 FE seems more in line with the 2022 Galaxy S22. Like Apple, Samsung seems to be reserving its latest chips for its flagships.

Still, the S23 FE remains slow, with scores of 1,549/1,613 in the Geekbench single-core test and 3,718/4,049 in the multi-core test. In fact, both scores are higher than the S22's Geekbench average, but the Exynos 2200 version has the edge in both single-core and multi-core scores, suggesting that some optimization has been done in the 18 months since its launch.

Still, it is still far behind the Samsung Galaxy S23 average (1,843 single-core and 4,857 multi-core). In other words, the S23 FE still needs to be competitively priced to make it worth getting before the Galaxy S23, which is currently below MSRP. And that puts it in a potentially awkward spot, at the cheap end of the market, when the Samsung Galaxy A54 presents such super value for only $449.