Galaxy S9's Snapdragon 845 and Exynos 9810 vs Apple A11 features comparison

Galaxy S9's Snapdragon 845 and Exynos 9810 vs Apple A11 features comparison

Qualcomm wrapped the detailing of its Snapdragon 845 chipset fairly quickly during its conference keynote in Hawaii, where it unveiled to us tech journalists its upcoming fastest processor. Well, fastest may not be the right word, more like the most feature-rich, as that's what will set the 845 apart when we find it in the Galaxy S9 and most other flagships next year. That, and the fact that Snapdragon 845 is up to 30% more power-efficient than the 835 when it comes to graphics-intensive tasks like video capture, games or virtual reality, claims Qualcomm.
It's been a familiar refrain for years now - the US gets a Snapdragon-equipped Galaxy S line flagship, because... Qualcomm patents, but also Verizon and Sprint's legacy CDMA voice networks. The rest of the world, however, usually basks in the battery life efficiency coming with Samsung's homebrew Exynos line of processors, and often the added benefit of a better audio processor.

Recently, Samsung announced that its second-generation 10nm LPP processors are entering mass production, while back in October the company touted the 8nm process as "production ready" only. Separately, Samsung informed us that the 10nm LPP chips are being churned out by its new S3 factory in Korea, but simply that the "7nm FinFET process technology with EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) will also be mass produced at S3," not falling into any kind of timeframe promises, though word through the grapevine puts 7/8nm chips on the conveyor belts in H2 2018.

That leaves only 10nm chipsets in mass production as we speak (likely the already-announced Exynos 9810 and Snapdragon 845), at a time that is getting awfully close to the rumored early release of the Galaxy S9. Thus, there is a strong possibility that the phone may come powered by precisely these two chipsets, that is why we are comparing their features below for your viewing pleasure, and throwing in Apple's current A11 juggernaut, plus Huawei's latest Kirin 970, as found in the Mate 10 Pro, for reference.
Snapdragon 845 Exynos 9810* Kirin 970 Apple A11
Production process 10nm LPP (Samsung) 10nm LPP (Samsung) 10nm (TSMC FF) 10nm (TSMC FF)
Processor cores 4x Kryo 385 @ 2.8GHz (custom Cortex-A75) + 4x custom Cortex-A55 @ 1.8GHz Likely 4x Exynos M3 + 4x Cortex-A55 4x Cortex-A73 @ 2.4GHz 4x Cortex A53 @ 1.8GHz 2x Monsoon @ 2.4 GHz + 4x Mistral cores
GPU Adreno 630 Likely Mali-G72 Mali-G72 MP12 @ 850MHz Apple custom tri-core
Modem Snapdragon X20 LTE (5xCA)

(download: Cat 18, up to 1200 Mbit/s; upload: Cat 13, up to 150 Mbit/s), 4x4 MIMO LTE Cat 18 (6xCA)

(download: Cat 18, up to 1200 Mbit/s; upload: Cat 13, up to 150 Mbit/s), 4x4 MIMO LTE Cat.18 (5xCA)

(download: Cat 18, up to 1200 Mbit/s; upload: Cat 13, up to 150 Mbit/s), 4x4 MIMO Customized Qualcomm X16 or Intel XMM7480 (download: up to 600 Mbit/s), 2x2 MIMO
AI co-processor Yes Likely (DeePhi) Yes Yes, "Neural Engine"
Video encode 4K HDR at 60fps Likely 4K HDR at 60fps 4K at 30fps 4K HDR at 60fps
Misc. Dual SIM dual VoLTE support

Bluetooth 5.0 with proprietary enhancements for ultra-low power wireless earbuds

6 satellite systems: GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, SBAS n/a Fast image recognition M11 motion coprocessor, and a new ISP for computational photography and wide color capture

*Samsung hasn't detailed the 9810 fully yet

Qualcomm wrapped the detailing of its Snapdragon 845 chipset fairly quickly during its conference keynote in Hawaii, where it unveiled to us tech journalists its upcoming fastest processor. Well, fastest may not be the right word, more like the most feature-rich, as that's what will set the 845 apart when we find it in the Galaxy S9 and most other flagships next year. That, and the fact that Snapdragon 845 is up to 30% more power-efficient than the 835 when it comes to graphics-intensive tasks like video capture, games or virtual reality, claims Qualcomm.
It's been a familiar refrain for years now - the US gets a Snapdragon-equipped Galaxy S line flagship, because... Qualcomm patents, but also Verizon and Sprint's legacy CDMA voice networks. The rest of the world, however, usually basks in the battery life efficiency coming with Samsung's homebrew Exynos line of processors, and often the added benefit of a better audio processor.

Recently, Samsung announced that its second-generation 10nm LPP processors are entering mass production, while back in October the company touted the 8nm process as "production ready" only. Separately, Samsung informed us that the 10nm LPP chips are being churned out by its new S3 factory in Korea, but simply that the "7nm FinFET process technology with EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) will also be mass produced at S3," not falling into any kind of timeframe promises, though word through the grapevine puts 7/8nm chips on the conveyor belts in H2 2018.

That leaves only 10nm chipsets in mass production as we speak (likely the already-announced Exynos 9810 and Snapdragon 845), at a time that is getting awfully close to the rumored early release of the Galaxy S9. Thus, there is a strong possibility that the phone may come powered by precisely these two chipsets, that is why we are comparing their features below for your viewing pleasure, and throwing in Apple's current A11 juggernaut, plus Huawei's latest Kirin 970, as found in the Mate 10 Pro, for reference.

*Samsung hasn't detailed the 9810 fully yet

 

While this comparison is interesting, not sure how valid this is for the Kirin and Exynos stuff as in the US, flagships are almost all Qualcomm or Apple chips. Samsung used to offer Exynos or Qualcomm depending on what carrier you were on or what version of the phone you got, but now they've seemed to all but stop that.