Probably everyone knows that Samsung has been releasing two different versions of each flagship smartphone for many years now. One is equipped with Samsung's own Exynos processor and is intended for sale in Russia, Europe and the CIS countries, and the other – with Qualcomm's Snapdragon – for America, Asia and Oceania. Thus, the Koreans are promoting the proprietary chip and specifically limiting the sales of different versions of their smartphones so that it is unprofitable to carry them between countries. But users at all times considered it a happiness to get a device not on Exynos, but on Snapdragon. We explain on our fingers what is the difference between them.
Choosing which Samsung smartphone to buy? It doesn't matter, most importantly, take on Snapdragon
Let's take the Galaxy S20 as an example, which comes in variations with the Exynos 990 and Snapdragon 865.
Why Snapdragon 865 is better than Exynos 990
Watch from 4:41
Oddly enough, the Snapdragon 865 turns out to be better than the Exynos 990 on all fronts. If earlier Qualcomm chipsets outperformed Samsung's branded 'stones' in terms of performance, but at the same time were inferior to them in autonomy, now Snapdragon is the undisputed leader in everything. This can be seen in the example of this video.
Here the blogger says that he tested both versions of Samsung's proprietary flagship and came to the conclusion that after three hours of active use, the version on the Exynos 990 was discharged to 59%, and the version with Snapdragon 865 to 71%. At first glance, the difference is not too big – only 12% – but for a smartphone this means an additional two hours of work.
When measuring the performance of both processors, the difference was even more noticeable. If the version on Exynos scored only 449 thousand points in the AnTuTu benchmark, then the version on Snapdragon – almost 527 thousand. That is, in fact, the difference in performance is almost 20% in favor of the 'American' modification. But where does this gap come from? If you look closely at the indicators, you can see that the whole point is in the more powerful Qualcomm graphics accelerator. It is he who gives the greatest gain. While the Exynos 990 has only 155,961 points, the Snapdragon 865 has 211,835 points.
Which is faster: Exynos 990 or Snapdragon 865
Snapdragon 865 is corny more powerful than Exynos 990
What does all this mean in practice? Well, oddly enough, but in real-life performance tests, the Exynos and Snapdragon go almost side by side. In any case, it was shown by tests on the speed of application launch. But with heating and throttling, things are no longer in favor of Exynos. Practice has shown that the proprietary Samsung processor heats up much faster than the Qualcomm solution, and starts dumping power to return to an acceptable temperature range earlier. Therefore, for gaming, 4K video shooting and editing, Snapdragon is clearly better suited.
But why does Samsung even equip smartphones with processors that are so disgraceful to users, knowingly snatching the worst product?
Of course, it's all about saving, because the production of Exynos chips is cheaper for Samsung than the purchase of flagship Snapdragons. We will not give exact figures, because, firstly, we risk making a mistake, taking into account not all expenses, and, secondly, in terms of one piece, the difference is not the greatest, even though on a global scale it allows Samsung to save several million dollars.
However, saving quite easily turns into earnings, since retail prices for smartphones with Exynos and Snapdragon chips are absolutely identical, of course, adjusted for the pricing peculiarities in each of the countries where Samsung sells its equipment. And that's not to mention the fact that Koreans don't have to use Snapdragon to help them optimize the proprietary processor, which, in general, also costs money. Therefore, Exynos prove to be beneficial to Samsung both in the short and long term.
Ironically enough, in the case of non-flagship models, there is no such paradox, because Samsung equips them all with Exynos chips. That is, if you want to buy a Galaxy A51 or A71, you will have no other choice, because these are budget devices, and the Koreans save on them as much as they can. This does not make Samsung's own processors bad, they just lose a lot against the background of Qualcomm's stones, which is very important when choosing a flagship. However, if you are looking for an inexpensive device, this difference is no longer so noticeable, since they rarely require the highest performance and speed indicators.