South Korean media reports Samsung is pushing to “raise the proportion” of Exynos chipsets in Galaxy phones, which seems to be Samsung’s response to the chipset shortage.

What’s happening:

• Korea’s ET News reports that Samsung Electronics is pushing to “raise the proportion” of Exynos chipsets in Galaxy phones from 20% to between 50% and 60%. 
• The outlet noted that Samsung’s LSI division will more than double shipments of Exynos chipsets in 2022.
• That presumably means less Qualcomm and MediaTek chips in mid- and lower-end Galaxy phones like the A-series though. 
• While Qualcomm powers most Samsung phones that don’t use an Exynos variant, there’s at least five devices, including the A32 4G and 5G variants, that use a MediaTek chip.
• So, is this Samsung’s response to struggling to get enough third-party chips from other suppliers?
• Well, it may be that Samsung’s chipsets are just getting better/fixed. ET News said a source suggested Samsung has addressed two key Exynos issues with the next generation of chipsets: “I know that the 5G communication and heat issue (sic), which were the most problematic issues in Exynos, have been resolved in the next production.”
• The next flagship Exynos will also be fabbed on a 5nm process, but it’s unclear if that will apply to lower-end Exynos chipsets too — Exynos 1080 was 5nm.
• The other element is the GPU, with at least the flagship Exynos to get AMD’s next-generation GPU in the next flagship Samsung Galaxy phone, likely the S22.

For Qualcomm:

• This all comes during the week where the WSJ published an in-depth profile on Qualcomm’s CEO, Cristiano Amo, which featured wording like: “I cannot find a customer that we’re not getting pressure from directly and indirectly,” he said. “It is a pressure cooker right now.”
• This might be Samsung’s way of releasing the pressure. But will consumers be convinced? Or do most people who buy mid-rangers not worry about chipsets beyond the right mix of pricing, specs, and battery life?

Bonus: There are rumors floating around of a final Samsung event for 2021 in the weeks ahead, but with the Galaxy S21 FE all-but canned or massively delayed until next year, no ideas yet as to what it could be?

👉 Another day, another day of Pixel leaks: Here are the Google Pixel 6 color names and what we think they match to, and now the new Google Pixel Stand has leaked in full (Android Authority).

📱 Sony is doing something: an Xperia launch on October 26, but exactly what’s coming hasn’t really been leaked at all, so who knows. The teaser image looks like light diffracting on a camera lens… (Android Authority).

🥽 After pivoting to enterprise, Magic Leap has somehow raised $500 million to make another AR headset: Magic Leap 2 (The Verge).

⌚ Amazfit launches three new, long-lasting smartwatches: Amazfit GTR Pro 3, GTR 3, and GTS 3 (Android Authority).

🍎 The (first?) USB-C iPhone is here thanks to a mod by a robotics engineer who spent months on it (The Verge).

🎧 Review: Yes, Urbanista’s solar-powered headphones really do work (Wired).

🍏 Apple tries to block Epic’s only court win before it takes effect on December 6 (Ars Technica).

🛒 Best Buy has a new $200/yr “Totaltech” membership that locks PS5 stock and some hot holiday items behind a membership wall… is it worth it? $200 a year is pretty crazy, but if you really, really want a PS5? (Ars Technica).

🍂 California first, but expect this to happen more widely: Gasoline-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers to be banned, as electric replacements get better and better (Ars Technica).

🧊 This ski resort is working to stop glacier melting, using “geotextile” blankets: “When we first did this, everyone was laughing at us. Now, they all want to come and see how to do this on their glaciers.” (Wired).

🌋 NASA has a $3.46B plan to cool the Yellowstone super volcano and harvest it for energy, but drilling into a volcano isn’t exactly a well-understood engineering feat (Interesting Engineering).

✨ That CME lit up the night sky with Auroras last night as predicted, but no concerns for power grid (Spaceweather.com).

📸 Astronaut’s photo from the ISS caught a huge blue flash in Earth’s atmosphere: A “transient luminous event” (Gizmodo).

🤔 “What’s something that’s unnecessarily expensive?” (r/askreddit).

Here are all the metals we mined in 2019, from iron ore to rare earths, an infographic out of Visual Capitalist that is pretty mind-blowing:

• Obviously, it’s pretty hard to read the detailed breakdown of the amounts of rare metals and so in the newsletter
• So, see the full version over at Visual Capitalist.

Catch you next week,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor