Samsung Galaxy S22 Will Offer SnapDragon SoC For Everyone

Samsung’s Galaxy S22 range of smartphones is taking shape ahead of a launch early next year, and one of the big decisions to make appears to be one of borne out of pragmatism in the current climate. It’s all about the heart of the smartphone and the critical design decision around which system on chip to use.

Previously Samsung has offered two broad variants of the Galaxy S handsets; one with its own Exynos system on chip, and one with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip. The later was focused on North American markets while the former were for the rest of the world. The potential for Samsung's change of direction have been reported by Ilse Jurrien:

"Samsung traditionally uses different chipsets, depending on the region. For example, the US models are usually equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. For Europe, the Exynos counterpart, from Samsung itself, is often chosen. However, due to the corona pandemic, serious production problems have arisen in the chip industry."

The Galaxy S22 line-up is now expected to default to Qualcom’s Snapdragon system, presumably the Snapdragon 895.

Analysts looking at this prospective switch are highlighting the ongoing silicon chip shortage across the entire industry as one of the points behind the decision. By standardising on the design, and forgoing the development of its own chipset to pitch in with the bulk buying power of Qualcomm, Samsung will be hoping to reduce production problems of its flagship handset.

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One thing that standardising the S22 handsets to a single system on chip means that certain comparisons between the two models to work out which is the “best” Galaxy are going to be null and void. When there is no Exynos vs Snapdragon comparisons, the difference in clock speeds, GPU handling, processor power differentials, and power consumptions (which are relatively small, although the SnapDragon is seen as a marginally better gaming handset than the Exynons), are no longer a concern.

Samsung is expected to launch the S22 family at its next Galaxy Unpacked event on February 8th, just ahead of Mobile World Congress 2022,