The Samsung Galaxy S22 will be the flagship model debuting early next year. But that could also be true in the literal sense, depending on the design decisions the company faces.

Twitter leaker @FrontTron points to a post on Korean forum Clien claiming that Samsung may not feature the previously rumored vapor chamber cooling system. The cooling system may be eliminated to keep costs down for the flagship phone.

The post suggests that Samsung's VIPs will make the final decision on whether to use the vapor cooling system, so it appears that the decision is not yet final.

Vapor chamber cooling systems are usually found in gaming phones as a way to keep mobile devices from getting too hot when playing graphics-intensive games. Overheating can degrade performance and is definitely something that is noticed when playing heavily loaded games.

Rumors that the Galaxy S22 will use vapor chamber cooling appeared earlier this summer. If adopted, it would be a reinstatement for Samsung, which first introduced this feature with the Galaxy S10 Plus. The Galaxy S20 also used vapor chamber cooling, but the Galaxy Note 20 teardown revealed a switch to graphite thermal pads.

Samsung also adopted the graphite thermal pad approach for cooling the Galaxy S21. A handful of users on both Samsung's community forums and Reddit have complained of overheating triggered by multitasking on various S21 models.

If Samsung were to use the same graphite thermal pad approach for the Galaxy S22, that would be a concern. However, it is not certain that vapor chamber cooling will make much of a difference for the average Samsung smartphone user. When we tested the Galaxy Note 9 and its water carbon cooling system, we did not notice that much of a temperature change in this phone. Any improvement would not justify the additional cost of an elaborate cooling system.

And for Samsung, with its Galaxy S lineup, cost is more important than ever. While the cost of flagship phones has been rising in recent years, Samsung changed course with the Galaxy S21, cutting the cost of each model by $200 from the equivalent S20 model. This allowed Samsung to set the Galaxy S21's starting price at $799, comparable to the price Apple charges for the iPhone 12.

It is unlikely that Samsung would want to raise the price of a smartphone so soon after lowering it. Therefore, it is understandable that expensive features such as vapor chamber cooling systems could be cut back.

The Galaxy S22 is said to be a departure from Samsung's current flagship lineup and will reportedly feature an Exynos chip with integrated AMD graphics. The new phone may also adapt an under-display camera, along with a thinner design.

It will be a little while before we find out if the rumored vapor chamber cooling system will eventually be used in Samsung's next flagship; the Galaxy S22 is not expected until early 2022, with the earliest announcement likely to be in January.