Samsung’s Galaxy Note20 series has been out in the wild for less than a month, but as you can expect, the phone has already been tested, broken down, and dissected by the good folks over at iFIxit. On that last note, it seems that the California-based private company made an interesting discovery on both models.
During its teardown process, iFixit found that both the Galaxy Note20 and Note20 Ultra have different cooling solutions; instead of implementing a uniform solution like a copper vapour chamber across the board, Samsung chose to fit some units with a cheaper multi-layered graphite thermal pad. And before you think that Samsung reserved the former cooling method for the Note20 Ultra and the latter for the Note20, we’re going to have to burst that bubble.
It seems like Samsung deployed two different cooling methods in the same phone model—and you won't know which you got unless you tear yours down. Don't worry, we did it for you: https://t.co/MWcjNilAbb pic.twitter.com/l5qqNCOwps
— iFixit (@iFixit) August 24, 2020
Based on several teardowns of the phones, iFixit discovered that which Note20 variants gets what cooling solution was a game of roulette; every Note20 and Note20 Ultra are potentially fitted with one cooling solution or the other. So, you getting the more premium copper solution is the very definition of “the luck of the draw”. Mind you, this game of probability applies to units using either Samsung’s Exynos 990 or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865+ SoCs.
Needless to say, Samsung’s decision to roll the dice on the cooling solutions for its recently launched Note20 series is shrouded in mystery and, if we’re honest, kind of defies both marketing and engineering logic. On the plus side, there doesn’t seem to be any complaints about overheating from either cooling solution at this point, so it’s probably safe to say that they both seem to work as intended.
