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What is Exynos 1000? Samsung’s upcoming Snapdragon-rivalling chip explained

UK fans have been royally shafted when it comes to Samsung phones in recent years, with the US getting the more efficient and powerful Snapdragon chip in the flagships. Could Exynos 1000 could finally change the mobile processor game?

While the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE graced the UK with the Snapdragon 865, it was an exception to the annoying rule – with the Note 20 series and Samsung Galaxy S20 all featuring the slower and less battery-friendly Exynos 990.

However, a popular rumour is pointing towards a big boost for the next iteration of Samsung’s flagship Exynos chip – a boost that would stop UK Samsung fans rueing their Exynos-sporting phones.

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What is Exynos 1000?

Exynos 1000 is the rumoured name for the chip that will feature on some models of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S21.

US models are expected to still sport an as-yet-unannounced Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 processor. In a turn up for the books, the Exynos 1000 may finally beat its Snapdragon equivalent in the performance stakes.

Both the Snapdragon 875 and Exynos 1000 are set to be based on Samsung’s 5nm process, which may explain the tighter race this time around and the slight favour in performance showed to the Exynos.

The news came when a user over on a Korean forum posted benchmark results of the two upcoming chips tested using Geekbench on separate Galaxy S21 (Galaxy S30) models. Here’s the reported performance results (via GSMArena):

Galaxy S21 (Exynos 1000) Galaxy S21 (Snapdragon 875)
Single-core 1302 1159
Multi-core 4250 4090

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As you can see, the Exynos 1000 handily beats the Snapdragon rival. These performance metrics are far from confirmed, officially or beyond this specific report, some continue to take these with a pinch of salt until further information emerges.

However, the statistics make for exciting reading for Samsung’s UK customers, who’ve long been saddled with worse performance for the same price.

What these results don’t show is battery life. Exynos chips have long offered worse battery life as well as worse performance. This is another case of wait and see but there’s the lingering possibility increased performance for the Exynos 1000 may very well impact battery life.

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