The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is the ultimate flagship and our pick of the best Android phones you can buy. And an early leak of its successor's specifications indicate that the Samsung Galaxy S23 is going to be even better. In fact, it's set to be the most powerful Android phone ever made.
The current state of the smartphone art is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 system on a chip, which you'll only find in very recent flagships such as the OnePlus 10T. But according to noted tipster Ice Universe, as reported by 91mobiles, Samsung is going for an even more powerful chipset for the Samsung Galaxy S23: the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which is expected to launch just before the end of 2022. That fits nicely with Samsung's usual release schedule: the Galaxy S22 launched in February.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: what to expect
The new chipset is the star, but it's not the only interesting thing in the rumoured spec: the Galaxy S23 Ultra is expected to have a 40MP front camera with autofocus and a whopping 200MP on the back. But the new chipset should improve some of the few areas in which the current flagship isn't quite perfect.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is expected to be a 4nm chipset with four kinds of core instead of the usual three: a Cortex-X3, 2 Cortex A720s, 2 Cortex A-710s, 3 Cortex-A510s and an Adreno 740 GPU. The X3 is Qualcomm's new prime core, promising 25% better performance than its predecessor. This new arrangement is expected to be much better at heat management, which is a key part of battery life: current Snapdragon Gen 1 phones have been criticised for their battery life, so the combination of this new chipset and a 5,000mAh battery could mean significantly improved stamina as well as speed.
We won't know for sure until Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit in November 2022, and the first phone firm to use the new chipset is likely to be Xiaomi: it's due to launch the Xiaomi 13 at the very end of 2022. But it's highly likely that the 2023 Samsung flagships will have the new chipset, and that means a bit of a dilemma: do you buy the Galaxy S22 now that there's a decent amount of discounting going on with the best Samsung Galaxy deals, or do you wait a few more months and pay a bit more for a phone that's going to be significantly more powerful?
It's a tough one, but that's the perils of being an early adopter: if you want the latest, greatest tech, there's always something even greater just a few months away.
