Samsung hypes Galaxy S21’s Exynos 2100 chip in announcement teaser

The Galaxy S21 series is leaking left, right, and center, and although Samsung hasn’t commented on the leaks, it has revealed that a new chip, possibly the Exynos 2100, will be launched on January 12.

This chip is expected to fuel the European, Middle Eastern, and South Korean variants of the Galaxy S21. The American and Chinese models will most likely have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 under the hood.

Is Exynos is back?

Samsung’s chips have earned a bit of bad rep in recent years. The criticism has apparently led to massive internal changes, such as the abandonment of the custom Mongoose cores. The chaebol has instead adopted Arm’s designs, and this is expected to help it reduce the performance discrepancy between Snapdragon-driven and Exynos based models.

The Exynos 2100 is tipped to offer the same architecture, but its Cortex-X1 core will likely operate at 2.91Ghz. The other cores are also expected to have higher clock speeds when compared to the Snapdragon 888. 

The new Exynos SoC is also reported to be more power-efficient than its predecessors. 

For reference, the Exynos 1080 has reportedly achieved 693,600 on AnTuTu. The Snapdragon 888, on the other hand, got 735,439.

Qualcomm’s new chip also doesn’t have a significant lead over the Exynos 1080 on Geekbench. The Snapdragon 888 has scored 1,135, and 3,794 on the single-core and multi-core tests, respectively. In comparison, the Exynos 1080 apparently managed 888 and 3,244 points.

The Exynos 1080 has lower specs than Qualcomm’s premium chip, which strongly implies that the Exynos 2100 will outdo the Snapdragon 888.

There is a minor possibility that the Snapdragon Galaxy S21 will outperform the Exynos version, and that too by a wide margin. That’s because leaker Roland Quandt has cautioned that the Exynos 2100 could turn out to be a 7nm chipset, and not a 5nm SoC as expected. 

The chances of that happening are slim, given that the mid-tier Exynos 1080 is based on the 5nm fabrication tech. Additionally, it also looks like Exynos 2100’s specs call for a more advanced fabrication process.