If you want a flagship with all the extras but without an inflated price tag, the S21 FE is the best choice. The phone gives you a lot of the same features as the S21 series, but at a lower price.
The way in which the S21 FE is delivered is that it has all the features you want while undercutting traditional flagships by a few hundred dollars. It's no wonder that the phone is selling so well around the world, and we are starting to hear the first details of what the next iteration of the phone will be called: the S22 FE.
If the leak is true, the S22 FE will be different from its predecessors. The phone is said to be powered by a Taiwanese manufacturer instead of a South Korean one. An internal source at MediaTek confirmed to me that the Dimensity platform is being used by a high-end phone.
This is a huge deal for both the S22 FE and the MediaTek. The fact that it is doing so with a high-profile phone like the S22 FE underscores the shift in thinking at the headquarters of the company.
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MediaTek turned its business around over the last two years, and is a viable alternative to Qualcomm in the high-end category. Of course Samsung is interested.
I outlined a few months ago how the Dimensity series of chipsets has led to heady gains for the company, all the while undercutting it on price.
In terms of performance-to-price figures, the brand gained several design wins with the Dimensity 1200, which ended up in the likes of theXiaomi 11T and the Vivo V23 Pro.
While we haven't seen the debut of the chipset outside of China, the Dimensity 9000 is turning out to be a formidable contender to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, and will be changing in the coming months.
Several setbacks have been suffered by the foundry that makes the Exynos chips. The division abandoned efforts with its custom Mongoose cores because of overheating issues. The difference with the Exynos 2100 last year was that it made a difference, but it wasn't able to deliver the same caliber of performance.
This is the main reason why an external manufacturer is being used for the in-house Exynos chip. On that note, a quick recap of how the strategy works.
The partnership is similar to how it licenses chipsets from other vendors. The LSI doesn't know what the phone is working on.
Exynos chipsets just haven't measured up to their Qualcomm counterparts in recent years.
In the last decade, the Exynos designs from LSI were used by SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS, but that hasn't been the case for some time now.
overheating issues have been running into the recent Exynos chipsets. In markets like India and the United Arab Emirates, where it has predominantly featured Exynos-powered flagships in the past, it was clear that the new S22 series would be using the chipsets from Qualcomm.
The reason why the S22 lineup is being switched up is due to the troubles of SAMSUNG LSI.
There is precedence for this move. Over the past decade, there have been designs from Texas Instruments and NVIDIA, and they are both excellent choices as an alternative to Qualcomm.
Kundojjala notes that there is room for growth for the company. The lack of an RF front-end platform prevents it from capturing more dollars per design win.
The lack of an RF front-end andmmWave 5G means that it would be limited to global markets, similar to what it does with Exynos chips now. The leader in that region is largely due to its 5G modem dominance, and that is not going to change anytime soon.
Having used Exynos-powered flagships for the better part of a decade, I am excited to see what a MediaTek collaboration would bring to the table.
I tested several devices with the Dimensity 1200 last year, and they were just as good as the offerings from Qualcomm. There are no issues with overheating, the CPU cores are just as fast as the ones on Qualcomm, and the graphics card is not as good as what you get on Qualcomm, but it comes close.
In a nutshell, using a MediaTek-powered chipset would alleviate all of the overheating issues that plagued Exynos in the last two years.
Most potential buyers would appreciate that there are no inherent drawbacks with the designs.
The most likely candidate for what the S22 FE would run is the 4nm Dimensity 9000. It has the same core cluster as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, with one Cortex X2 core at 3.0 GHz, three A710 cores at 2.85 GHz, and four A510 cores at 1.80 GHz.
There is a ten-core Mali-G710 on the graphics side of things. There is an overclocked version of the Dimensity 9000 that has the X2 core going up to 3.20 GHz, and this version will end up in the S22 FE. The S21 FE is already one of the best phones of the year, and the S22 FE is also one of the best phones of the year.
Where does this leave? It is unlikely that the Exynos chips would be dropped altogether, but it is clear that the strategy of the company needs to be changed. One way it could do that is by tailoring the components of the devices.
I said earlier that the mobile unit may change in the future, but that the LSI does not work directly with it. It takes several years of effort to design a custom chip in partnership with a company like SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS.
It will be interesting to see how the collaboration with MediaTek turns out.
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