The Exynos 2100 is just trying to reach Qualcomm, which is exactly Samsung’s plan

The Exynos 2100 appears to be Samsung’s best mobile chip to date.

It features the ARM Cortex-X1 core with three other Cortex-A78 cores and four A55 cores that consume less energy to work well with your battery. It also has the ARM Mali-G78 GPU for graphics 40% better than the last generation, a tri-core NPU for better AI in the device, is ready for 5G (both Sub-6GHz and mmWave) and is built in the process of Samsung’s 5nm technology to save even more battery.

Expect to see it on all of Samsung’s best phones – including the impending Galaxy S21 – throughout 2021. In a world where no one has bothered to worry about the chip inside their phone and how a specific brand can be much better than that everything else, that would be great and everyone would be satisfied.

But here’s the thing. We care that a chip brand has marginally better AI reaction times, takes better pictures, has better 3D graphics, has better battery life and takes off other brands’ pants when it comes to connectivity, especially LTE and 5G . I’m talking, of course, about the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform.

The reason the latest Snapdragon will always be a better chip than the latest Exynos is no secret. Qualcomm is a company specializing in the sale of mobile chips and its core products are really its only focus. They have been the sole focus for long enough that the company has stumbled upon some great ideas. It is forced to license some of them, but others are only part of what makes a Snapdragon so good. Samsung and Qualcomm can begin with ARM reference core designs, but that’s where the similarities end and the Snapdragon 888 will once again outperform the Exynos 2100 in almost all measurable ways.

The Exynos2100 will be good, but the Snapdragon 888 will be better.

And Samsung agrees with that because it is not a company that only makes mobile chipsets.

Here’s what no one really wants to hear: Exynos SoC exists just as a way for Samsung to save money on its high and mid-range phones. It is the same year after year; in some countries, Samsung needs to license Qualcomm’s modem technology to try to compete with the latest Snapdragon SoC (System on a Chip). To make things easier, Samsung simply purchases a Snapdragon SoC for phones in these parts of the world, especially in North America. Everywhere else, there is a model with an Exynos engine, which is much cheaper to buy. Yes, Samsung needs to buy from Samsung in many cases. Processors are one of them.

Samsung could buy a Snapdragon 888 (which everyone is sure will be the Galaxy S21’s engine) for all models in all countries and everything would work. Everything would also be much more expensive and no company created to make a profit likes when things are more expensive.

Maybe we should just use things and not try to measure everything.

Don’t get me wrong – the Exynos 2100 will be a great chip and will power many devices. It will probably be refurbished and paired with an AMD GPU to boost the inevitable Galaxy Z Fold 3. But there will be noticeable differences in performance when compared to a Snapdragon 888 model. Millions of people living outside of North America will buy a Samsung phone with Exynos and will love it Because the chip works so well. Perhaps people who are not obsessed with things like which smartphone chip is best have the right idea.

But you will read all over the internet, including here Android Central how users are seeing better performance from the Galaxy S21 with Qualcomm technology than from the model with Exynos. Some people will be angry about it, others just won’t care, but most will just deal with it because it’s the same thing every year.

However, there is a silver lining – Exynos chips are getting better year after year and with ARM’s new Cortex-X program, Samsung is really on the verge of a breakthrough. With ARM helping to build and tune cores for the right balance between performance and power and AMD working to deliver a world-class mobile GPU, an Exynos chip in the near future will be as good or better in everything except North America 5G networks. And if you’re not living in North America, you don’t even have to worry about it.

This is not going to be this year, however. The Exynos 2100 will be fine and most users won’t, but it expects Qualcomm’s versions of the S21 to be the “best” and Samsung will save a lot of money building things that way.