The Galaxy S22 series is Samsung’s next big thing. The Korean giant will unveil the new flagship in early February, and you’ll have it in your hands by the end of next month, assuming you preorder one. The Galaxy S22 already has some fans very excited, as the Ultra model will all but replace the Galaxy Note 22. The phone will feature a Note-like design that includes a built-in S Pen stylus. The Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22 Plus will look more like an iPhone with a hole-punch display — and we are getting an iPhone 14 with a hole-punch screen this year. But the latest Galaxy S22 development concerns the phone’s specs, and it’s the result of the company’s massive Exynos 2200 failure.
The Galaxy S22 specs detail that matters the most
For years, Samsung has used two types of System-on-Chips (SoC) in its flagship handsets. Some markets have gotten a Qualcomm chip, while others got the Exynos chip. The latter is Samsung’s own SoC that competes directly against the newest Snapdragon and iPhone processors.
We expected the Galaxy S22 specs to follow the same pattern. The US versions would get the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor that Qualcomm announced a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, international models would get Samsung’s Exynos 2200. The Exynos 2022 should have featured a unique RDNA 2 GPU, a result of a direct partnership with AMD.
Samsung planned an Exynos 2200 reveal for January 11th and made a big deal about it on social media in anticipation of it.
“The gaming marketplace is about to get serious,” Samsung teased in a now-deleted tweet dated December 30th, 2021. “Stay tuned for the next #Exynos with the new GPU born from RDNA 2. January 11, 2022.”
There’s no Exynos 2200 SoC
But January 11th came and went, and Samsung did not hold the Exynos 2200 presentation that should have preceded the Galaxy S22 Unpacked event. Instead, we only got one big piece of news that day: The introduction of the China-bound OnePlus 10 Pro.
The Exynos 2200 represents another massive SoC failure for Samsung. Even worse, the company teased the event less than two weeks before quietly canceling it. Something must have happened during that time to make Samsung reconsider.
How is that good news for the Galaxy S22? Fans of the Galaxy S series might remember the Galaxy S20 series. The Exynos versions of the phone received so much criticism that even Samsung mocked itself. The company acknowledged the problems with the Galaxy S20 Exynos versions last year when it introduced the Exynos 2100 chip. Samsung implied that it had listened to customers and it’s striving to do a better job.
In other words, the Exynos 2200 failure to launch seems to be good news for Galaxy S22 buyers who are looking for the best possible specs. That means the best possible processor that Android has access to, and that’s the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. We already have rumblings saying that the Snapdragon 8 overheats, but that’s a different story. It might be that mobile SoC design has reached a point where revolutionary innovations are required to continue improving the power and efficiency of each new SoC generation.
One final plot twist
Barring any surprise Exynos 2200 announcement from Samsung, the Galaxy S22 might offer the same specs across the globe. It’s one of the moves many fans have been wanting for years.
But Samsung might unveil the Exynos 2200 in time for the Galaxy S22 launch after all. Samsung commented on the Exynos 2200 event cancelation on January 12th. “We are planning to unveil the new application processor at the time of launching a new Samsung smartphone,” Samsung said in a statement, without revealing other details. “There are no problems with the [processor’s] production and performance,” the person said.
There’s also always the possibility that Samsung unveils the Exynos 2200 before a different Galaxy handset launch, not the S22 series.
