Exynos 2100 is only catching up with Qualcomm, which is exactly Samsung’s plan

The Exynos 2100 appears to be Samsung’s best mobile chip yet.

It includes ARM’s Cortex-X1 core with three other Cortex-A78 cores and four less power-hungry A55 cores to play well with your drums. It also features ARM’s Mali-G78 GPU for 40% better graphics than last gen, tri-core NPU for better on-device AI, is 5G ready (both sub-6 GHz and mmWave) and is built on Samsung’s 5nm process. technology to save even more battery.

Expect to see it in all of Samsung’s best phones – including the impending Galaxy S21 – throughout 2021. In a world where no one cares about the chip inside their phone and how much a specific brand can be better than all the rest, that would be great and everyone would be happy.

Here’s the thing though. We want a chip brand to have slightly better AI reaction times, take better photos, have better 3D graphics, get better battery life, and weed out other brands when it comes to connectivity, especially LTE and 5G types. I’m talking, of course, about the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform.

It’s no secret why the latest Snapdragon will always be a better chip than the latest Exynos. Qualcomm is a company specializing in the sale of mobile chips and its flagship products are really its only focus. They have been the sole focus for long enough that the company stumbled upon good ideas. He’s obligated to license some of them, but others are just part of what makes a Snapdragon so good. Samsung and Qualcomm can both start with the base ARM designs, but that’s where the similarities end and the Snapdragon 888 will once again outperform the Exynos 2100 in almost every measurable way.

The Exynos2100 will be good, but the Snapdragon 888 will be better.

And Samsung is okay with that, because it’s not a company that only builds mobile chipsets.

Here’s what nobody really wants to hear: The Exynos SoC only exists to save Samsung money on its high and mid-range phones. It’s the same year after year; in some countries, Samsung has to license Qualcomm modem technology to even try to compete with the latest Snapdragon (System on a Chip) SoC. To make things easier, Samsung is just getting a Snapdragon SoC for phones in those parts of the world, mostly North America. Everywhere else, an Exynos-powered model is much cheaper to buy. Yes, Samsung has to buy from Samsung in many cases. Processors are one of them.

Samsung could buy a Snapdragon 888 (which everyone is sure will be what powers the Galaxy S21) for every model in every country and everything would work. Everything would also be much more expensive, and no business set up to make a profit likes it when things are more expensive.

Maybe we should just use things and not try to measure everything.

Make no mistake, the Exynos 2100 will be a great chip and power a lot of devices. It will likely be revamped and paired with an AMD GPU for power up the inevitable Galaxy Z Fold 3. But there will be some notable differences in performance compared to a Snapdragon 888 model. Millions of people living outside of North America will buy an Exynos-powered Samsung phone and love it. because the chip works so well. Maybe people who aren’t obsessed with things like the best smartphone chip all have the right idea.

But you’ll read everywhere on the internet, including here at Android Central how users see better performance of the Galaxy S21 powered by Qualcomm than the model powered by Exynos. Some people are going to be mad about it, others don’t care, but most will deal with it just because it’s the same every year.

There is a silver lining, however: Exynos chips keep getting better and better with each passing year and with ARM’s new Cortex-X program, Samsung is truly on the verge of a breakthrough. With ARM helping to build and tune cores for the right balance of performance and power, and AMD striving to deliver a world-class mobile GPU, an Exynos chip in the near future will be as good or better in everything but 5G. North American networks. And if you don’t live in North America, you don’t even have to worry about it.

It won’t be this year, however. The Exynos 2100 will be fine and most users won’t care, but expect the Qualcomm versions of the S21 to be the ‘best’ versions and Samsung is going to save a ton of money by building things that way. .