If there’s one Android handset that’s corresponding to the iPhone, it’s Samsung’s newest Galaxy S cellphone. Greater than the Pixel 6 Professional, OnePlus 9, or regardless of the newest Android taste of the month is, the Galaxy S22 line affords a stage of design, options, and aptitude that’s nearly Apple-like, with an plain identification and affect over the remainder of the trade.
However whereas iPhone and Galaxy followers can argue over who has the higher show, design, and digicam, there’s no denying that Apple is the clear chief in terms of the processor. Samsung, the world’s largest chipmaker, nonetheless makes use of Qualcomm’s newest top-of-the-line flagship Snapdragon chip for its North American Galaxy telephones, whereas the remainder of the world will get Samsung’s homegrown Exynos processor. The Snapdragon often comes shut, however neither can match Apple’s energy, processing, and effectivity.
The abroad fashions of Samsung’s flagship telephones use the Exynos 2200 processor.
Adam Patrick Murray / IDG
That was supposed to alter with the latest Exynos chip. After Samsung launched the Exynos 2100 in 2021 and dumped its customized CPU cores for the Cortex-X1 CPU core, it put a renewed emphasis on efficiency and energy effectivity. Equally, this 12 months’s Exynos 2200 chip turned the main focus to graphics efficiency with a brand new Samsung Xclipse GPU based mostly on AMD’s RDNA 2 structure. When it launched, Samsung boasted that the chip would allow “the final word cell phone gaming expertise” and for some time, it appeared just like the worldwide S22 may lastly give Apple’s flagship iPhone chip a run for its cash.
So we have been excited to check it out. We already know that Qualcomm makes nice cellular processors that rival Apple’s A-Sequence chips, however a high-level Exynos chip from Samsung might be a game-changer. If an S22 with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is without doubt one of the finest telephones on the planet, think about how a lot larger it might be with Samsung controlling the entire stack with a high-powered Exynos chip.
Sadly, that’s not the case. Our colleagues at Tech Advisor are busy testing the Galaxy S22+ with the Exynos 2200 processor and, properly, the outcomes aren’t nice.
That’s not a lot of an enchancment over the Exynos 2100‘s multi-core rating of three,263 and nowhere close to a breakthrough in efficiency. The CPU numbers right here aren’t even higher than a two-year-old iPhone 11 with an A13 processor. Granted, CPU scores aren’t all the pieces, however with digicam and communication options demanding increasingly assets annually, telephones want as a lot energy as they’ll get. Notably while you’re spending a thousand {dollars} plus for a brand new handset that claims to be “game-changing.”
It’s not significantly better in terms of the neural processing engine. Utilizing Geekbench ML, Apple’s A15 has a TensorFlow Lite CPU rating of 950 and a Core ML rating of 2511, whereas the Exynos 2200 barely tops 400. And that’s with Samsung boasting that the Exynos 2200’s NPU “has doubled in comparison with its predecessor, permitting extra calculations in parallel and enhancing the AI efficiency.” So…yikes.
And it’s even worse while you have a look at graphics efficiency. The place final 12 months’s Exynos 2100 really bested the Snapdragon 888 utilizing 3D Mark’s Wildlife take a look at, the S22+ barely tops final 12 months’s rating and isn’t in the identical league because the A15.
That’s the largest disappointment of the Exynos 2200. Samsung teamed up with AMD for the Eclipse GPU facet with a novel hybrid graphic processor that’s “positioned between the console and the cellular graphics processor.” Samsung describes it as such: Xclipse is the mixture of ‘X’ that represents Exynos, and the phrase ‘eclipse’. Like an eclipse, the Xclipse GPU will carry an finish to the previous period of cellular gaming and mark the beginning of an thrilling new chapter.
The one factor that’s eclipsed is its efficiency. Not solely did it barely beat final 12 months’s Wild Life rating (5,852) it’s trounced by each the A15 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which topped 10,000 in reported exams. GPU efficiency is extraordinarily essential in at the moment’s telephones and never only for video games—smartphone UIs have change into extraordinarily superior and the GPU is chargeable for ensuring all the pieces runs, rolls, and renders easily.
The iPhone 13 Professional and Galaxy S22+ will each be getting updates in 4 years, however the iPhone will seemingly be working a lot smoother.
Michael Simon/IDG
That efficiency hole might be much more of a problem in 4 years when Samsung guarantees the S22 will get One UI 8. With the launch of the S22, Samsung additionally introduced it is going to ship 4 years of One UI and Android OS upgrades, which would require a cellphone that may deal with 4 years of use. These benchmarks don’t precisely give us confidence.
The Galaxy S22 with the Exynos 2200 chip was speculated to be the cellphone that lastly surpassed the iPhone, and the Exynos chip was rumored to land in Samsung’s subsequent Galaxy E book. But when that is the perfect Samsung can do, maybe they need to simply surrender altogether.
Michael Simon has been protecting Apple for the reason that iPod was the iWalk. His obsession with expertise goes again to his first PC—the IBM Thinkpad with the lift-up keyboard for swapping out the drive. He is nonetheless ready for that to come back again in type tbh.