- Samsung may not use vapor chamber cooling on the Galaxy S22 series as previously rumored.
- The phones could make do with thermal graphite pads for heat dissipation.
Samsung apparently wants to save costs on heat dissipation tech for the Galaxy S22 series. According to a new rumor via tipster FrontTron, the company may not use vapor chamber cooling on the new flagships.
The mobile team over at Samsung reportedly wanted to use vapor chamber cooling alongside the new Exynos chip with the AMD GPU to improve performance and reduce throttling. However, the latest leak suggests that top officials at Samsung haven’t signed off on the change for cost-saving reasons.
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This isn’t the first time we’re hearing about Samsung considering vapor chamber cooling for the Galaxy S22 series. A previous report also claimed that the tech would improve the efficiency and performance of the phones.
Samsung used vapor chambers on the Galaxy S10 series. However, the company ditched the tech subsequently in favor of multi-layered graphite thermal pads as its primary way of draining the heat away from the CPU.
Does vapor chamber cooling really matter?
Back when Samsung launched the Galaxy Note 20 series, it was using two kinds of cooling systems. Some Galaxy Note 20 Ultras used graphite thermal pads while others got a copper vapor chamber for cooling. Many thought the omission of vapor chamber cooling on some Note 20 Ultra models is why the phone ran hot.
However, an investigation by folks over at iFixit found that there is little difference between the heat dissipation performance of vapor chambers and graphite. The publication quoted a thermal engineer saying, “As long as you take the gap tolerances into consideration, it can be simple enough to swap them out for each other.”
As for costs, the engineer pointed out that Samsung was able to use heat pipes and vapor chambers for a long time due to the volume of devices sold. When Samsung first used a vapor chamber, the company reportedly estimated it sold up to a million additional phones owing to the novelty of having a vapor chamber. The decision not to use the tech in newer phones like the Galaxy S21 and possibly the Galaxy S22 series could be because it’s no longer as hyped up as before. It also probably won’t make a world of a difference to performance.
What are your thoughts on Samsung sticking to graphite thermal pads for cooling the Galaxy S22 phones? Does it really matter to you? Take our poll above and drop us a line in the comments section.