Samsung has been hitting the headlines for so many reasons – good and bad, we can understand. But when it’s for bizarre reasons, that’s when we get in the way. For years, they have been on the sharp end of the sword for using Exynos in their flagship in other countries. It’s not a bad processor in any means mind you, but it was slightly behind the wildly popular Qualcomm Chipsets.
Despite the backlash, Samsung caved in and gave the Qualcomm powered Galaxy S22 but what consumers don’t understand is that – the caveat Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 has and why Samsung put a failsafe, a cutoff point in the performance and for someone who has used Samsung smartphones in a while, I can tell you why the extra measures taken with the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Performance is in the right direction.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Performance
Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is a Hot Processor
Qualcomm processors has been great in terms of performance for a long time, that it is become the “Intel of the ARM Processors”. And just like how Intel is known for their struggle in the past few years, Qualcomm has been facing somewhat, if not the same issues. since the 855 – Qualcomm has had some issues managing thermals as the phone running it, runs hot. OEMs who uses these processor to make a smartphone, came up with a solution of having thermals that can manage the heat in many interesting ways – Samsung did it with the Vapor Chamber Cooling on the Note9 (which ASUS did first with their ROG Phone).
But it has gone to a point that the surface area and the limited space in a smartphone has made matters worse: when there’s limited space, it comes with a compromise and when it gets compromised, there are consequences. While maintaining the phone relatively thin and adding more and more new hardware, the cooling system that “deemed” to be successful, fails to be successful and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 really fails to stay cool even with all the thermal solutions OEMs usually add.
Other Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Phones Struggles with Thermals
Recently in a conversation with a friend of ours where he was reviewing another Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 smartphone, which also happens to be a gaming smartphone, did a stress test where the Phone was extremely consistent with the top-score performance, but it failed in the thermal area where its much higher than it used to be.
This is a temperature we see in a device that has poor thermal management capability but, in this case, that’s not the problem. Even if it has a good thermal management, the phone would have compromised in other areas such as: the thickness, weight and other factors which loses the integrity. But Samsung did something that’s very unconventional with the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Samsung’s Solution: Placing a Failsafe, a cutoff if you will
Unlike how the other smartphone brand we mentioned earlier, where it touches crazy hot temperature. Samsung did this: including the phone with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, and then when the phone notices it’s about to get hot, the “failsafe” or “cutoff” engages where the performance gets throttled but then again it isn’t noticeable as the phone processor is capable of keeping up a good performance.
So, we did the same stress test: with the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and our very own S21 Ultra. You can see that the scores drop significantly with the S22 Ultra, but it stabilizes at a range of 4000-5000 points. The sudden burst of score looks great but it immediately realizes its not good, so the capping happens. Thermals on the other hand, ranges from 38 to 43 degree Celsius (vs. other Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phone above which has 31 to 53 – a good 10 degrees difference and that’s hot okay).
Our trusty Exynos powered S21 Ultra on the other hand gave the following scores: In a range of 4000-3000 which is fine because the Exynos was indeed inferior to last year’s Snapdragon Processor, but the thermals manage between 39-48 degrees which is still a few good degrees lower but higher than the S22 Ultra and if you held your phones at 48 degrees, getting a low-grade burn is possible.
Performs a wee bit under than the Raw 8 Gen 1 but it’s still fast
You could go to Antutu Benchmark and see that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra ranks a little lower than the other flagships that are powered by the same processor. But that’s okay, synthetic benchmark only shows how capable the raw performance is and otherwise, the real-world performance is totally different. Given that manufacturers in general are pretty great at “faking” their scores which we have seen in the past and getting delisted from the rankings, it’s also another reason to take those scores with a pinch of salt.
In Samsung’s case, having 10k+ points lower than the other Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 isn’t a deal breaker as it still performs like a flagship, and you won’t notice the difference anyway. It’s a reasonable difference I am willing to take over other smartphones we have tested in the past that scores 900k+ points when in reality it performs like a 250k+ points processor and sure, this is an exaggeration, but you see where I am going with this.
Lesson Learned:
In this article, we conclude that:
- Speed comes at a price – and that price is insanely hot thermals, which can potentially ruin your device integrity over the time and not to forget your performance as well.
- Synthetic Benchmark scores ≠ Real World Performance – this is never right and what you experience in your day-to-day life is different from benchmarks that tells a different story entirely.
So, whatever Samsung did with the Galaxy S22 Ultra Performance, is indeed unconventional, unpopular, doesn’t mean it’s wrong if it’s done with the right intention and we are totally fine with what Samsung did here to keep things in control and not crack under pressure.
P.S. Thanks to our friend Jim Low from TechNave for sharing about the other Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 powered phone’s Benchmark.
