With work on the 2021 top-of-the-line range over, it's time for Samsung to look ahead to next year and the Galaxy S22: the latest on the chip
Except for Galaxy S21 FE which is expected to debut in a few weeks, the "lineup" of Samsung's top-of-the-line smartphones for 2021 ended with the unveiling of the foldable Galaxy Z Fold3 and Galaxy Z Flip3 last week, with Z Fold3 taking the place of Galaxy Note this year thanks to support for the S Pen.
Samsung has in fact decided not to renew the series that over the years, thanks to the stylus, has given him much satisfaction of a commercial nature, and probably in this choice has also influenced the global situation of difficulty in terms of finding the necessary chips to make a smartphone. The company has therefore decided to go all in on the foldable, which should represent the future and whose price has fallen to reasonable levels, at least with regard to Z Flip3, which just exceeds the threshold of 1,000 euros. Now it's time for the Seoul-based company to focus fully on the high end of next year, which will see in the forefront at the beginning of 2022 the Galaxy S22.
Galaxy S22 with Snapdragon 898
On the Galaxy S22 is expected a small revolution. Samsung in fact has relied on the collaboration with AMD for the development of the chips of the next top of the range which will have a GPU, or rather a "graphics card", designed side by side with the masters of AMD and their architecture RDNA2.
The Exynos 2200 will therefore have a GPU of the highest profile, judging by the background and the wisdom of the men of AMD. But the bad news is that according to the latest information, most Galaxy S22s will not have Samsung's chip. The indiscretion that comes from South Korea reports that the reason would not be to seek in unsatisfactory performance.
The chip that initially would have to equip much of the Galaxy S22 in the first tests showed more than good performance: it is said that it is not at all internal to the powerful Apple A14 Bionic that equips the iPhone 12. The reason would be related to the difficulties of Samsung - and not only Samsung - to produce a sufficient amount of chips to cover the sales of the Galaxy S22, so the top of the range with Exynos will be sold in a handful of markets among which, moreover, there will be no South Korea.
The news implies that most Galaxy S22s will come to market equipped with Qualcomm's best chip for 2022, namely the Snapdragon 898, unlike now with the Exynos 2100 chip that equips smartphones sold in Europe, the Middle East and Korea.
Extra work for Google
Samsung perhaps, in addition to the current chip crisis, would also be paying for the extra work it secured by deciding to lend Google a hand with the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro chips. The Google Tensor is described by the latest rumors as a component with several points of contact with Exynos chips, even some claim that, trivially, it is an Exynos revised by Google.
It is rumored that Samsung Galaxy S22 will not have the under-screen camera seen on Galaxy Z Fold3 and that its design should not differ much from current smartphones. The biggest improvements will be focused on the cameras, and who knows, a 200-megapixel sensor may not be employed.