Introduction
The Galaxy M22 is one of Samsung's numerous low-cost phones to have been released in 2021, and it's actually the third Galaxy phone to carry the “x22” designation after the Galaxy A22 and the Galaxy F22.
The Galaxy M22 has more in common with the F-branded phone than it does with the Galaxy A22, but they all look very much alike, with minor exceptions. Likewise, the hardware is almost identical across all three phones.
All in all, by the time the Galaxy M22 went on sale in mid-2021, it had nothing new to offer, as it was simply a re-envisioning of a different smartphone that was inspired by another. But the lack of originality doesn't always take away from practicality, and the Galaxy M22 is a relatively decent — albeit uninspired — low-cost solution.
Design
The Galaxy M22 has an Infinity-U display with a fairly prominent “chin,” i.e., lower bezel. The main camera housing is shaped like a square with rounded corners, and the LED flash resides on the outside of the camera bump.
The right edge accommodates the physical volume rocker and a side key featuring a fingerprint sensor. The phone measures 160 x 74 x 9.4mm and tips the scales at around 200 grams.
Display
The Infinity-U display design is mated with a Super AMOLED panel capable of a 90Hz refresh rate and roughly 600 nits of brightness.
The panel has a 20:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1600 by 720 pixels (HD+). Given the 6.4-inch size, this results in a pixel density of around 275ppi (pixels per inch).
Camera
The main camera has autofocus and a resolution of 48MP. It's accompanied by an 8MP ultra-wide shooter, a 2MP macro sensor, and a 2MP depth camera. The phone is capable of recording 1080p videos at 30 frames per second.
The selfie camera has a lower resolution than the Galaxy M21 released a year before. It clocks in at 13MP, down from 20MP. It, too, can record 1080p@30fps videos.
Specifications
The Galaxy M22 relies on the MediaTek Helio G80 chipset built on a 12nm process. It has a total of eight CPU cores, two of which are high-performance ARM Cortex-A75 cores clocked at 2.0GHz. The other six are Cortex-A55 energy-efficiency cores operating at up to 1.8GHz.
The CPU works hand-in-hand with a Mali-G52 MC2 graphics chip and 4GB or 6GB of RAM. Storage options include 64GB and 128GB. The phone has a microSD card slot, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. The device has Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac connectivity.
Every one of these components relies on a generous 6,000mAh battery with 15W fast charging capabilities.
Software
The Galaxy M22 ships with Android 11 and One UI Core 3.1. This was the latest version of One UI at the time of release, but ‘Core' is a more lightweight version of the full-fledged software experience, and it's missing some features.
The phone should be eligible for two major Android OS updates throughout its lifetime.