By John Callaham (Wedn, September 29, 2021)
With rumors flying on the internet that Samsung has canceled plans to release the Galaxy S21 FE, it looks like the phone maker is moving forward with the release of the Galaxy S22 phone series. However, if a new regulatory filing is accurate, the standard Samsung Galaxy S22 battery could actually last less on a single charge than the current standard Galaxy S21.Samsung/SamMobile
In a filing with the South Korean certification agency (via SamMobile), Samsung uploaded a picture of a battery that has the EB-BS901ABY model number. The phone that is highly suspected to be the Galaxy S22 has the model number SM-S901B. According to the image of the battery, its rated capacity is 3,590mAh, and its typical capacity is 3,700mAh.
Any way you cut it, this would seem to confirm that the standard Galaxy S22 will have a battery that’s at least 300mAh less than the 4,000mAh battery found on the Galaxy S21. So why would Samsung cut the battery down? One possible explanation is that the rumored display size on the S22 is just 6.02 inches, compared to the 6.2-inch screen on the Galaxy S21. SamMobile also says the Galaxy S22 could have Samsung’s Exynos 2200 processor inside, which may be more efficient in terms of power use compared to the Exynos 2100 that’s inside the S21 in international markets.
That being said, cutting down the battery by a full 300mAh throws any possible speculation on the Galaxy S22’s true battery life into the wind until we get our hands on one. In our own tests, we found that we could keep using the Galaxy S21 for over a day on a single charge. Depending on various factors, that might not be possible with the Galaxy S22. There’s also no telling what the battery life will be if the phone uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor for the US market.
The fact that Samsung may be cutting down the battery on its next major flagship smartphone, in a world where similar phones have batteries that are sized at 5,000mAh or even higher, could make the Galaxy S22 a huge disappointment in that very crucial hardware spec.