Here’s how Samsung’s Galaxy S22 series performs in benchmarks

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S22 series at its February 2022 ‘Unpacked’ event.

I went hands-on with the Galaxy S22 Ultra ahead of its reveal and offered up my initial impressions of the device, however, now that I have the S22 Ultra in my hands, I was able to put it through its paces ahead of my full review.

It’s worth noting that Samsung’s Galaxy S22 series are the first smartphones in Canada to feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor. Qualcomm’s 8 Gen 1 focuses on 5G, AI, and uses the 4th-gen Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF system, which Qualcomm says can hit 10-gigabit download speeds.

In the charts above, you can see how Qualcomm’s new chipset in the Galaxy S22 series performs pretty similarly to the Snapdragon 888 in the S21 series in terms of single-core and multi-core scores.

Additionally, the iPhone 13 Pro Max’s A15 Bionic still leads the pack, with the Pixel 6′s Tensor chip coming in last.

That said, I don’t put much stock into benchmarks because a device can still offer a great experience and benchmark relatively low. For example, the Pixel 5 remains a great smartphone despite only offering a single-core score of 589 and a multi-core score of 1,603.

Thermal issues could be a factor in the S22 Ultra scores

The Galaxy S22 Ultra’s scores are by no means low, but they are weirdly slightly under the S22+. First, phones with a lower screen resolution sometimes benchmark better since the chip doesn’t have to drive as many pixels — the S22 Ultra does have a higher resolution than the S22+.

However, that couldn’t be the sole reason why the S22+ performed so much better, so we’ve started testing some theories and it seems likely that thermal throttling plays a part. The S22+ gets a bit warm after performing two consecutive benchmarks (and even saw a slight bump to the result) while the Ultra got hotter and scored even lower. Heat is definitely an issue when it comes to performance, and I typically use a case, which can trap heat. I performed the tests without a case, and while the S22 Ultra still didn’t perform better than the S22+, it did better than when the case was one.

The S22 Ultra has new ‘Gel-TIM’ technology that’s supposed to help with heat when the device is in heavy use, but it doesn’t seem to be in effect after performing a benchmark. I haven’t gamed very much on the S22 Ultra, but I have played a few rounds of Tetris (currently 25th ranked in Toronto according to the app) and the device stayed nice and cool during my gameplay.

We’ll have to do some more testing, but it looks like the S22 Ultra might have some concerns. We’re not the only ones to note this — PCMag also noted thermal throttling issues on the S22 series in benchmarks.

For full Canadian pricing information on the S22 line, check out this story. And we’ll have full reviews of the Galaxy S22, S22+ and S22 Ultra in the coming weeks.