Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 has become an open secret (and an exiting one at that), but Samsung itself has now revealed a potentially fatal flaw.

Samsung specialist site GalaxyClub has spotted a submission by Samsung to South Korea’s official testing institute, the KTR, for certification of a new Galaxy Note 10 battery. And it’s far smaller than you would expect.

With a rated capacity of just 4170mAh, the battery is just 170 mAh larger than the 4000 mAh battery inside the Galaxy Note 9. But the big news is this battery isn’t just going into a much larger device this year (the Note 10 screen size is 6.75-inches), but this is the battery for the 5G version. In contrast, the Galaxy S10 5G has a 4500 mAh rated battery.

How can we tie the KTR-submitted battery to the Galaxy Note 10 5G? It has the product number EB-BN972ABU and Samsung batteries carry the product code of their intended smartphone within them after ‘B’ for battery. The Galaxy Note 10 range begins N970, but that is reserved for the 4G version so, with BN972, we’re looking at either the Exynos or Snapdragon 5G edition here.

Galaxy Note 10 battery submitted by Samsung to KTR

GALAXYCLUB.FI

The implications for the wider Galaxy Note 10 range are also concerning when you look at the Galaxy S10 line-up. The 4G Galaxy S10 Plus has a 4100mAh battery, 400 mAh smaller than the Galaxy S10 5G, a similar drop would push the standard edition of the Galaxy Note 10 down to 3800 mAh, which is 200 mAh smaller than the Note 9. Throw in that massive new screen and accommodating the S Pen will come with a bigger cost than usual this year.

On the flip side, there are plenty of positive reasons to still be excited for the Galaxy Note 10. Its new design, an upgraded quad camera, next-gen RAM and improved storage are just a few. But perhaps we also now have a reason why Samsung thinks the Galaxy Note 10 may requires super fast charging