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That's interesting. People here in Europe hate Exynos chipsets, they say they are worse than Qualcomm. Are they giving up on them finally?

by favaq 4y ago

jsheard 4y ago
The Exynos variants usually are worse than the Qualcomm ones, the cynical take was that most prominent phone reviewers are based in the US so giving that market the superior chipset served to bait-and-switch the other markets into buying inferior hardware. It remains to be seen if Exynos will return for the S24 or they'll stick with Qualcomm across the board.
- hocuspocus 4y ago
  > the cynical take was that most prominent phone reviewers are based in the US I don't think that's true, most of the reviews I read and watch on YouTube are made in Europe, UK, India. When I worked at Samsung the reason was two-fold: - There's a lot of internal competition, having two SoC suppliers for your flagship phones gives you leverage against both Qualcomm and in-house teams. - Samsung treads lightly with US carriers. Using Qualcomm modems makes their certification process and field testing easier.
p_l 4y ago
Dunno, the real complaint against exynos in favour of Qualcomm other than tribalism is that a lot of stuff was developed for Qualcomm with Adreno and not whatever GPU Exynos spouted at the time (custom weird thing early on, then PowerVR, nowadays Adreno). In USA they used Qualcomm due to CDMA shenanigans mainly. Oh, and stuff like qualcomm-specific hacks people were used to from Jail broken HTC devices (like phone call recording) not working. Final minority complaint was essentially based on qualcomm devices being more popular so you had more resources for custom roms, despite the fact that Exynos meant no need to do complicated jailbreak to load a custom rom. Personally I found no issue with Exynos chips whatsoever. Always some of the fastest stuff I had in my hands.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Most benchmarks showed Exynos falling behind in both performance and power effeciency for years. I don't know if this is still the case with the latest models, but many Exynos phones were also plain worse than their Qualcom counterparts. Quite sad, really, because the space can use some competition.
  - Shakahs 4y ago
    It is still the case. This team went deep into benchmarking mobile chipset power efficiency, Exynos does not do well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      That's very unfortunate. With their vertical integration, Samsung is one of the few companies that can actually compete with Apple if they can get the tech up to spec.
- alexvoda 4y ago
  Can you source your claim that Exynos used weird GPUs? AFAIK, Exynos mostly used ARM Mali (the default for ARM chips) cores with the exception of the most recent iteration when they formed a partnership with AMD to use RDNA in the 2200 model. I am absolutely sure no Exynos chip ever used Adreno and I also think they never used PowerVR.
  - hocuspocus 4y ago
    The Exynos 5410 (for instance in the Galaxy S4) had a PowerVR GPU. Afaik that's the only one, Samsung was already using ARM Mali extensively then. The Hummingbird (Galaxy S and iPhone 4) had one too but arguably it became part of the Exynos line-up after the fact.
    - alexvoda 4y ago
      Thank you for the correction. I did not know about those 2 examples.
killingtime74 4y ago
The latest S23 ditches the Exynos variant
- ajolly 4y ago
  Does that make it easier to get root on a US-based Samsung phone? Or US band compatible anyways?
Steltek 4y ago
I hope it goes the other way. My recollection is that the Exynos phones were able to be bootloader unlocked and flashed with other ROMs while the Qualcomm ones were locked down forever. I've stayed away from Samsung phones for that reason.

That's interesting. People here in Europe hate Exynos chipsets, they say they are worse than Qualcomm. Are they giving up on them finally?

by favaq 4y ago

That's interesting. People here in Europe hate Exynos chipsets, they say they are worse than Qualcomm. Are they giving up on them finally?

jsheard 4y ago

The Exynos variants usually are worse than the Qualcomm ones, the cynical take was that most prominent phone reviewers are based in the US so giving that market the superior chipset served to bait-and-switch the other markets into buying inferior hardware. It remains to be seen if Exynos will return for the S24 or they'll stick with Qualcomm across the board.

hocuspocus 4y ago
> the cynical take was that most prominent phone reviewers are based in the US I don't think that's true, most of the reviews I read and watch on YouTube are made in Europe, UK, India. When I worked at Samsung the reason was two-fold: - There's a lot of internal competition, having two SoC suppliers for your flagship phones gives you leverage against both Qualcomm and in-house teams. - Samsung treads lightly with US carriers. Using Qualcomm modems makes their certification process and field testing easier.

p_l 4y ago

Dunno, the real complaint against exynos in favour of Qualcomm other than tribalism is that a lot of stuff was developed for Qualcomm with Adreno and not whatever GPU Exynos spouted at the time (custom weird thing early on, then PowerVR, nowadays Adreno). In USA they used Qualcomm due to CDMA shenanigans mainly. Oh, and stuff like qualcomm-specific hacks people were used to from Jail broken HTC devices (like phone call recording) not working. Final minority complaint was essentially based on qualcomm devices being more popular so you had more resources for custom roms, despite the fact that Exynos meant no need to do complicated jailbreak to load a custom rom. Personally I found no issue with Exynos chips whatsoever. Always some of the fastest stuff I had in my hands.

jeroenhd 4y ago
Most benchmarks showed Exynos falling behind in both performance and power effeciency for years. I don't know if this is still the case with the latest models, but many Exynos phones were also plain worse than their Qualcom counterparts. Quite sad, really, because the space can use some competition.
- Shakahs 4y ago
  It is still the case. This team went deep into benchmarking mobile chipset power efficiency, Exynos does not do well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ukXDnWlTY
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    That's very unfortunate. With their vertical integration, Samsung is one of the few companies that can actually compete with Apple if they can get the tech up to spec.
alexvoda 4y ago
Can you source your claim that Exynos used weird GPUs? AFAIK, Exynos mostly used ARM Mali (the default for ARM chips) cores with the exception of the most recent iteration when they formed a partnership with AMD to use RDNA in the 2200 model. I am absolutely sure no Exynos chip ever used Adreno and I also think they never used PowerVR.
- hocuspocus 4y ago
  The Exynos 5410 (for instance in the Galaxy S4) had a PowerVR GPU. Afaik that's the only one, Samsung was already using ARM Mali extensively then. The Hummingbird (Galaxy S and iPhone 4) had one too but arguably it became part of the Exynos line-up after the fact.
  - alexvoda 4y ago
    Thank you for the correction. I did not know about those 2 examples.

killingtime74 4y ago

The latest S23 ditches the Exynos variant

ajolly 4y ago
Does that make it easier to get root on a US-based Samsung phone? Or US band compatible anyways?

Steltek 4y ago

I hope it goes the other way. My recollection is that the Exynos phones were able to be bootloader unlocked and flashed with other ROMs while the Qualcomm ones were locked down forever. I've stayed away from Samsung phones for that reason.