Samsung's Galaxy S22 could feature a significantly smaller battery

The Galaxy S22 might make do with a 3,700mAh battery

The folks over at GalaxyClub report that Samsung is planning to equip the base Galaxy S22 with a battery cell that offers a rated capacity of 3,590mAh. That means the typical (and advertised) capacity should be around 3,700mAh.

For reference, the battery inside the current-gen Galaxy S21 offers a rated capacity of 3,880mAh and an advertised capacity of 4,000mAh. In other words, the Galaxy S22 battery capacity could be around 7.5% lower than that of the Galaxy S21.

As revealed recently, Samsung is planning a similar downgrade on the larger Galaxy S22+ device. The Galaxy S21+ ships with a 4,800mAh cell, but next year’s flagship could make do with a 4,500mAh battery like the older Galaxy S20+.

There’s good news for Ultra-owners, though. Leaks suggest that Samsung will once again use a 5,000mAh battery inside its top-of-the-range smartphone, so there shouldn’t be any battery life issues for S22 Ultra users.

Presumably, the South Korean brand will be betting on efficiency gains to make up for the battery capacity differences in its two more affordable flagships. Some of that could come from the Exynos 2200 and Snapdragon 898 chipsets, set to be built on improved 5-nanometer manufacturing processes that consume less power.

The 5G modems that Samsung uses are likely to be more efficient too, reducing the draw on battery. Alongside that, the Galaxy S22 series is likely to adopt Samsung’s new Eco 2 OLED display technology. That debuted on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 last month and consumes 25% less power than the previous display.

Completing the whole battery experience is likely to be much faster charging. Specifically, the latest rumors point to 45W fast charging on the Galaxy S22 lineup, up from 25W on the current models.

Touching once again on Samsung's plans to use the Exynos 2200 in certain models, the next-generation processor is arguably Samsung's most highly anticipated chipset ever thanks to the brand's plans to include an AMD GPU for the first time, which should bring some huge upgrades.

The improvements in the CPU department are likely to be more tame, but that's expected to be the case across the entire chipset industry next year so it shouldn't be cause for concern. Without more advanced manufacturing processes, it's hard to make big CPU leaps.

Moving on to the cameras, rumor has it that there won't be too many changes. The Galaxy S22 Ultra should retain a 108-megapixel main camera and 12-megapixel ultra-wide shooter, both of which are set to offer optical image stabilization (OIS). 

Two 12-megapixel zoom cameras are expected too, with one acting as a 10x periscope camera and the other as a 3x telephoto. For the selfie fanatics out there, the Galaxy S22 Ultra will offer a 40-megapixel sensor.

Last but certainly not least, let's talk about the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ cameras. The setups are likely to be identical and consist of a 3x telephoto zoom camera paired with unspecified main and ultra-wide snappers. A 10-megapixel selfie camera is on the way too.