Samsung Galaxy S22 availability might be massively delayed
If you were hoping to be able to get a Samsung Galaxy S22 in your hands shortly after the February 9 announcement then you might be out of luck, as according to the latest leak the phone might not ship until over a month later.
That’s according to Jon Prosser, a leaker with a mixed track record, but who has often been right in recent months.
Prosser claims that the Samsung Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22 Plus won’t hit stores until March 11, with the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra being available from February 25. So the Ultra could land a lot sooner, but still more than two weeks after the announcement.
Bad news: I’m told that due to supply chain issues, the Galaxy S22 lineup has had a slight setback. Pre-order for ALL devices is still happening on event day (Feb 9)However, availability has now been split: S22 Ultra: Feb 25S22 & S22+: Pushed to March 11 pic.twitter.com/pp2IFAYXSNJanuary 31, 2022
You apparently won’t have to wait to put your order in though, with pre-orders for all models said to be opening on the day of the announcement.
This delay is supposedly due to supply chain issues, which somewhat lines up with another recent leak, and is believable in any case, since we know there’s an ongoing chipset shortage.
If you’re certain you want one of these handsets, it will probably be worth putting your order in straight away. Otherwise we wouldn’t be surprised if you end up waiting even longer for the phone than Prosser says, as you’ll be further along in the queue for a handset.
On the other hand, if you don’t mind that risk then you might be better off waiting until we at TechRadar have put each handset through a full review, in case they have any big issues.
Analysis: the S22 Ultra conundrum
We note above that this latest news somewhat matches another recent leak, in so much as that supply constraints will reportedly hamper the availability of the Samsung Galaxy S22 range, but that earlier leak specifically highlighted the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra as likely to suffer from this.
According to that leak, the Galaxy S22 Ultra could face delivery delays of up to three months as a result of expected high demand.
The other S22 models aren’t mentioned, suggesting that the Galaxy S22 Ultra could be the hardest model to get hold of, which is odd if – as this latest leak suggests – it will hit stores earlier than the other models.
You’d think Samsung would start stocking the S22 Ultra later than the others in order to build up a large supply if there was really likely to be big delays.
Either way though, it’s becoming clear that the Samsung Galaxy S22 range as a whole could prove hard to get hold of for a while.
