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Exynos 2100 vs Snapdragon 888 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
Samsung has been releasing two versions of most of its premium smartphones in recent years - one with a Qualcomm chipset and another one with its own Exynos chips. And as we all know Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 (US&China) and Samsung's own Exynos 2100, available on every other market even in Qatar
The Exynos 2100 was released as an improvement over the Exynos 990 and to take on the Snapdragon 888 with an improved power efficiency when compared to the previous model. However, the chipset doesn’t seem to match up the capabilities of the Snapdragon 888.
Exynos 2100 vs Snapdragon 888 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra benchmark tests
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The test was carried out using the two variants of the Galaxy S21 Ultra running Exynos 2100 and Snapdragon 888 processors. The team performed several tests on both devices which suggest that Samsung’s 5nm (5LPE) fabrication process brings some improvements to the Exynos 2100 in terms of power efficiency compared to their predecessors.
However, the Exynos 2100 is on par with TSMC’s 7nm process (N7P) and doesn’t measure up to the more advanced 5nm process. As a result, Qualcomm’s SD888 fared better in many of the tasks than the Exynos 2100 and also consumes less power. The exynos 2100 throttles earlier than the Snapdragon 888 counterpart which then slows down the performance when the load is sustained.
The benchmark tests also show that the Exynos 2100 has a higher power consumption of up to 18-35% compared to the Snapdragon 888. The battery life will bear the brunt of this high power consumption. Both PCMark Work 2.0 and web browsing battery life test confirm that the Galaxy S21 Ultra Snapdragon 888 version lasts longer on a single charge compared to the Exynos 2100 version of the same flagship phone.
Exynos 2100 vs Snapdragon 888 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra Battery testing
| Chipset | Samsung Exynos 2100 | Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 |
| CPU | 1x 2.9 GHz – Cortex-X1, 3x 2.8 GHz – Cortex-A78, 4x 2.2 GHz – Cortex-A55 | 1x 2.84 GHz – Kryo 680 Prime (Cortex-X1), 3x 2.42 GHz – Kryo 680 Gold (Cortex-A78), 4x 1.8 GHz – Kryo 680 Silver (Cortex-A55) |
| Manufacturing node | 5nm EUV | 5nm |
| GPU | Mali-G78 MP14 (14 cores) (Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 2.0, DirectX 12) | Adreno 660 (Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 2.0, DirectX 12) |
| Memory support | LPDDR5, 3200 MHz, max 50 Gbit/s, max size 16GB | LPDDR5, 3200 MHz, max 50 Gbit/s, max size 16GB |
| Storage | UFS 3.1 | UFS 3.0, UFS 3.1 |
| Multimedia support | Max display res: 4096 x 2160, Video capture: 8K@30fps, 4K@120fps; playbak: 8K@60fps | Max display res: 3840 x 2160, Video capture: 8K@30fps, 4K@120fps; playbak: 8K@60fps |
| Neural processor (NPU) | Triple-core NPU (up to 26 TOPS) | Hexagon 780 26 TOPS |
| Modem | LTE Cat. 24, up to 3000 Mbps down, 422 Mbps up; 5G SA/NSA/Sub6/mmWave, up to 7.35 Gbps down, 3.67 Gbps up | LTE Cat. 22, up to 2500 Mbps down, 316 Mbps up; 5G SA/NSA/Sub6/mmWave, up to 7.5 Gbps down, 3 Gbps up |
The thing is that in real-world use, which our proprietary battery endurance test suit tries to simulate, the phone is never really pushed to the max. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Here are the new battery endurance results as achieved by the Snapdragon 888 unit:
It is important to note a few things about the testing methodology. The standby tests were conducted with the best possible network signal, in the default state of the S21 Ultra, namely with S-Pen on and AOD off.
In call tests the difference is not huge by any stretch of the imagination, but it still caught our eye, especially since the common consensus seems to be that Qualcomm's X60 5G modem is a bit more efficient than Samsung's Exynos one. However, those claims are mostly related to efficiency in 5G network connectivity. Our call test is deliberately executed over a 3G or 4G connection to keep it comparable to older tests as much as possible.
The on-screen tests were done in native 1440p resolution with Adaptive refresh rate mode turned on, while constantly monitoring the actual refresh rate with Android 11's built-in tool.
As for the video playback, the phone maintained a 48Hz refresh rate throughout the test - since it does actually do that when playing back 24fps content, we think that this, too, is a good representation of real-life usage.
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