With the Exynos 2100, Samsung has no room for error

Samsung unveils its new Exynos 2100

The virtual keynote for the launch of the new Exynos 2100 is a first for Samsung. The fact that the manufacturer pays so much attention to its processor gives hope that the South Koreans have more to offer this time around than with the Exynos 990.

It is remembered in Europe, among others, the Galaxy S20 went on sale with the Exynos 990, while the United States and other countries received the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865.

Samsung always makes sure its processors are as powerful as possible, but the number of criticisms that have been leveled should have made the company realize that many users are unhappy with the performance of its in-house processor. For a long time, Samsung justified itself and put things in perspective in this regard, but then they must have realized that they had indeed disappointed the fans (and especially the testers, let’s be honest).

How else to explain that Samsung, in the run-up to its Exynos event, bounced a video teaser on the web, explicitly responding to the reactions of disappointed Samsung followers and promising to do better?

It’s almost here. Stay tuned for the #ExynosOn. #Exynos_is_back https://t.co/bEfaV2qxWv pic.twitter.com/kqJGxNy4MN

– Samsung Exynos (@SamsungExynos)
January 12, 2021

But the mere fact that the smartphone giant is producing an online presentation specifically for a new Exynos processor shows how serious the company is this time around. Let’s take a quick look at the facts.

Exynos 2100: Samsung bombs the chest

Like Qualcomm with the Snapdragon 888, Samsung relies on the combination of a high performance Cortex X1 core, three Cortex-A78 cores, and four Cortex-A55 cores for the Exynos 2100. The X1 clock, with 3, 9 GHz, is even a little higher than that of the Snapdragon, the other seven base clock frequencies being 2.8 and 2.2 GHz respectively.

For the first time in a mobile processor, the Exynos 2100 engraved in 5 nm will be equipped with an integrated 5G modem. Another first is the fact that here is manufactured using the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) process of 5 nanometers (nm). This results in up to 20% lower power consumption and 10% better overall performance than its 7nm predecessor.

Samsung talks about the Exynos 2100, which improves performance by 19% for single-core compared to its predecessor, and 33% for multi-core. The processor supports HDR10 + displays up to 4K resolution and also supports 8K TV output. Mali’s G78 MP144 GPU is responsible for graphics, and graphics performance is reportedly up to 46% better.

Artificial intelligence has also seen a significant increase, since the three-core NPU is supposed, according to Samsung, to calculate 26 trillion operations per second, against “only” 15 trillion for the predecessor. As for the camera, it supports resolutions of up to 200 megapixels and up to six photo sensors, four of which simultaneously.

Snapdragon vs Exynos: Samsung hits the nail on the head!

Of course, when you criticize certain chipsets from the past, it is to complain at a very high level. It is sometimes forgotten that Samsung is not only the biggest smartphone maker in the world, but also one of the biggest and biggest chipmakers in the world. It is therefore undeniable that South Koreans produce good SoCs.

But “good” doesn’t automatically mean you can keep up with the market leader, and when it comes to processors for flagship smartphones, Samsung also has to admit that it hasn’t been able to compete with the Snapdragon. Qualcomm so far. When an Exynos 990 was installed in the Galaxy Note 20 last year instead of the Snapdragon 865, it wasn’t just our Antoine who was horrified.

Sometimes Samsung really makes you want to pull your hair out, even though it might sound strange coming from someone who has my hair. Samsung is simply world class in many ways, there is nothing wrong with that. But sometimes they do things that make you want to bang your head against a wall.

Personally, for example, I always feel this when I get a service from Samsung that I don’t want to use. Its own mobile payment system, its own music service, its own messaging app … Samsung has been through a lot, and many of them haven’t lasted long.

The term “Bixby” should also remind you of something. It’s one thing to think that you need your own voice assistant for your ecosystem. But giving it its own physical button, which you couldn’t freely assign for far too long – it’s one of those times when Samsung is still pushing a little too much.

I mention all of this because it also looks similar with the processor. Samsung shouldn’t stop production, as chipsets are great for many smartphones, whether they’re made by Samsung or by other manufacturers. But in the Premium class, Samsung still behaves like a finicky kid. Want to follow the best processor here or even surpass it, basta! The approach is legitimate, but difficult to communicate when you repeatedly fail.

That’s why I now believe the Exynos 2100 is pretty much the last bullet Samsung has left in its marketing revolver. After the Exynos 990, Samsung is due to give its advanced hardware an SoC this year at least equal to that of the Snapdragon 888. If it doesn’t, not only last year’s reviews will be back on the carpet, but they will bring many more disgruntled friends with them.

Paths of hope for the Exynos 2100

There have already been benchmark test leaks that lead us to suspect that Samsung may have finally hit the nail on the head in terms of performance. According to the leak, the Exynos 2100 would not only live up to the most powerful Qualcomm processor, but would be able to surpass it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean much just yet, and this duel will only really be decided when we don’t talk about artificially created test environments, but real-use testing. But by then the Exynos 2100 presents itself in a very aggressive way and the improvements over the previous generation mentioned at the event give us hope for great things.

Exynos? Snapdragon? Is it really that important?

With that in mind, I would also like to conclude by asking you, the NextPit community. Don’t get upset if it soon turns out that Samsung’s next flagship smartphone will again have the “wrong processor” in the “wrong regions.” Let’s first wait for the real-world tests and see how the Exynos 2100 behaves in practice.

And allow me to follow up on a somewhat provocative question, which was asked on the sidelines of the keynote: how many people really think of the processor installed in their smartphone? I mean outside of this tech bubble we gravitate around? Personally, I think most ordinary users don’t care. When I check with my acquaintances, they can’t even tell me which version of Android their smartphone has on board.

It is therefore possible that we exaggerate these comparisons a little and that a premium smartphone remains a premium smartphone, even if some benchmarks highlight more or less subtle differences between two versions of the same product.

Finally, do you think the Exynos 2100 will perform better than the Snapdragon 888? And do you think this is actually a basic criteria for many smartphone buyers? Let us know in the comments.