After nearly everything was leaked about Samsung's 2022 flagships, the Galaxy S22 series was finally made official last month. The phones represent the best of what the Korean OEM has to offer this year at different price ranges. We reviewed the Galaxy S22 Ultra with 12GB RAM, which offers truly massive potential for whatever use cases you can think of. With the gradual rise in availability, we were bound to see aftermarket development work and custom modifications start to pick up for the device trio. As expected, Samsung has now released the kernel sources for the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22 Plus, and Galaxy S22 Ultra.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 family is powered by the company’s in-house Exynos 2200 chip in Europe and a handful of Asian countries. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 variant, on the other hand, is available in North America, Latin America, Africa, Oceania, and most of the Asian regions including India. Just like any other Android device release, the company must release its kernel source code in order to comply with the GPLv2 license that the Linux kernel is under. Samsung has done that, but only for the Exynos variants so far.
If you’re a developer, you can now head over to the Samsung Open Source Release Center and access the kernel source code for the Exynos models of the Galaxy S22 (SM-S901B), Galaxy S22 Plus (SM-S906B), and Galaxy S22 Ultra (SM-S908B). The initial release is based on the software version S90xBXXU1AVA7 (AVA8 for the regular Galaxy S22).
Due to the fact that the Galaxy S22 shipped with One UI 4.1 out of the box, the kernel sources are based on Android 12. While there are individual releases for each model, it is technically possible to create SoC-specific unified trees by combining the relevant packages.
Samsung Galaxy S22
The Samsung Galaxy S22 is the entry flagship for 2022, bringing over top of the line performance and camera capabilities in a form that fits many pockets and budgets.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus offers a good mixture of reliable performance and great features packed in a premium body.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra combines the best of the S and Note series for a powerful beast of a machine that excels for work and play.
With kernel source code availability, developers can start porting the popular TWRP custom recovery, develop custom kernels, and release custom ROMs for the aforementioned devices. However, such mods are only useful if the device’s bootloader is unlockable, which sadly is not the case for some of the Snapdragon-powered models. You can still check out the model-specific XDA forums to keep an eye out on the development scene.
XDA Forums: Samsung Galaxy S22 || Galaxy S22 Plus || Galaxy S22 Ultra