One of the most exciting things about the Samsung Galaxy S23 lineup is it comes with a customized version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. This chip can reach a clock speed of up to 3.36GHz, which is higher than the standard 3.2GHz for this chip and 3.0GHz speeds achieved by the Gen 1 chip.
That kind of performance boost doesn’t come without consequence, so it was good to hear Samsung confirmed that the S23 series' cooling capabilities have been given a welcome boost as well. While the phone maker didn’t go into specifics, leaker Ice Universe has published a diagram showing how the new phones’ cooling systems compare to the Samsung Galaxy S22 phones.
The heat dissipation area of Samsung Galaxy S23 series is increased, as shown in the figure. pic.twitter.com/XkTW91vIm2February 2, 2023
As you can see in the GIF, the vapor chambers on all three Galaxy S23 models are much larger than they were last year — with the biggest change happening to the Galaxy 23 Plus.
Vapor chamber cooling works thanks to the liquid, often water, contained within. The liquid absorbs heat produced by your phone, turning into vapor and travelling to a cooler area where it can condense. Once the vapor turns back into a liquid, it returns to the original area to start the process anew.
The excess heat leftover when the fluid condenses is then dissipated away from the phone and prevents the device from overheating. Reducing the amount of heat means the phone’s processor and graphics chip can run faster and for longer. An added benefit is that this stops heat building up around the battery, which would otherwise prove detrimental to battery health over time.
The bigger the chamber, the more area there is for heat to spread out, and the better heat dissipation should be. Pushing a machine to faster clock speeds is going to ramp up the amount of heat it produces — so bigger and better cooling systems can only be a good thing. Especially since the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset promises to be faster than its contemporaries.
As you'll see in our Galaxy S23 Ultra benchmarks, the phone is performing quite well in early testing and actually beats the iPhone 14 Pro series in graphics performance. But we'll be performing more tests to see how the Ultra and other new Samsung S23 phones stack up.
For more, see our Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review in progress, as well as our Samsung Galaxy S23 hands-on review.
