A listing that’s reportedly for the rumored Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus and Galaxy S22 Ultra appears to show that both models will have smaller batteries than their predecessors.
Spotted by MyFixGuide, the listing comes courtesy of the 3C Certification, China’s compliance service for electrical products, and supposedly shows model numbers that are linked to the Galaxy S22 Plus and S22 Ultra and detail the capacity of the phones’ battery packs.
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The model with the number EB-BS906ABY is said to match the Galaxy S22 Plus, according to MyFixGuide’s sources, and shows the phone is set to have a 4,370 mAh battery. That’s smaller than the 4,800 mAh battery pack found in the Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus.
And the model number EB-BS908ABY is apparently linked to the Galaxy S22 Ultra, and shows that the phone could have a 4,855 mAh battery capacity. Like the Plus model, this battery is smaller than that of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which has a 5,000 mAh battery.
A report of smaller batteries for the Galaxy S22 is not a big surprise, as we've already heard rumors of the S22 series featuring smaller displays this time around. So it stands to reason that the batteries would shrink along with the screens.
Is this bad news? A smaller battery means more room could be given to upgraded features, say a powerful graphics processor that’s expected on the Exynos 2200, which we’re predicting will come with the next Samsung flagship phone. Or leave room for improved camera hardware, which is likely to feature in the Galaxy S22.
But in our battery life testing for the current Galaxy S21 phones, which involves web surfing over 5G until the phones conks out, the Galaxy S21 Ultra lasted a solid 11 hours and 25 minutes. That’s enough to get it a place on our best phone battery life list. But a smaller battery, when combined with phone boosted features, could torpedo one of the impressive features of Samsung’s Ultra phones.
Comparatively the Galaxy S21 Plus managed 9 hours and 41 minutes, which isn’t stellar. So an allegedly smaller battery pack for the Galaxy S22 isn’t exactly great news.
However, what Samsung takes away with one hand it could give with another, and that could be optimization. If all of the Galaxy S22 models worldwide have Samsung’s own Exynos chipset rather than a Qualcomm chip, then the company could have even greater control over efficiency. And that optimization could take place at a silicon and software level, meaning the smaller batteries are compensated for. Though this is just speculation on our part.
We’d expect to see the Galaxy S22 make its debut early next year. But in the meantime, we’re not short of rumors what could be coming for Samsung’s next flagship. We’re expecting improved cameras, potentially boosted optical zooming for the telephoto camera, a possible under-display camera (we’ve already seen that feature in the Galaxy Z Fold 3) and potentially faster charging.
Whether the Galaxy S22 will be a significant upgrade or evolution on the Galaxy S21 lineup has yet to be made clear. The Galaxy S21 phones scored places on our best phones list, but we’d still like to see Samsung take some risks with the Galaxy S22 and push forward phone innovation for 2022.
