Samsung’s S22 chip is to date behind the A15 it ought to most likely simply quit
If there’s one Android handset that’s similar to the iPhone, it’s the most recent 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 gives a stage of design, options, and aptitude that’s nearly Apple-like, with an plain id and affect over the remainder of the business.
However whereas iPhone and Galaxy followers can argue over who has the higher show, design, and digicam, there’s no denying that Apple has the clear lead on the subject 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 Snapdraon often comes shut, however neither can match Apple’s energy, processing, and effectivity.
Adam Patrick Murray / IDG
That was supposed to vary with the most recent 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 yr’s Exynos 2200 chip turned the main target 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 S22 may lastly give Apple’s iPhone 13 a run for its cash.
So we had been excited to check it out. We already know that Qualcomm makes nice cell 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 usually are not 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 every little thing, however with digicam and communication options demanding increasingly assets annually, telephones want as a lot energy as they will get. Significantly once you’re spending a thousand {dollars} plus for a brand new handset that claims to be “game-changing.”
It’s not significantly better on the subject 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 once you take a look at graphics efficiency. The place final yr’s Exynos 2100 really bested the Snapdragon 888 utilizing 3D Mark’s Wildlife check, the S22+ barely tops final yr’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 aspect with a novel hybrid graphic processor that’s “positioned between the console and the cell graphics processor.” Samsung describes it as such: Xclipse is the mix of ‘X’ that represents Exynos, and the phrase ‘eclipse’. Like an eclipse, the Xclipse GPU will convey an finish to the previous period of cell 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 yr’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 assessments. GPU efficiency is extraordinarily necessary in in the present day’s telephones and never only for video games—smartphone UIs have change into extraordinarily superior and the GPU is accountable for ensuring every little thing runs, rolls, and renders easily.
Michael Simon/IDG
That efficiency hole shall be much more of a difficulty in 4 years when Samsung guarantees the S22 will get OneUI 8. With the launch of the S22, Samsung additionally introduced it would 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 was imagined to be the cellphone that lastly surpassed the iPhone. If that is the very best Samsung can do, maybe they need to simply quit 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 model tbh.