So Samsung officially announced the Exynos 9820 processor that's gonna power the Galaxy
S10.
One of the greatest areas of improvement in the Exynos 9820 over 9810 is the addition
of a dedicated neural processing unit to offload AI-related tasks.
Samsung says that this NPU chip allows the processor to perform AI-based tasks over 7
times faster than the Exynos 9810.
We've seen how the Huawei Mate 20 uses its dual NPUs for new video features, so it makes
sense for Samsung to finally include an NPU on their chipset if they want to make the
Galaxy S10 competitive.
The CPU has two custom cores to do the heavy lifting.
The two Cortex-A75 and four Cortex-A55 cores are for optimal performance and greater efficiency.
This new core setup allows the Exynos 9820 to achieve improved single core performance
and power efficiency.
It delivers 20 percent increase in single core and 15 percent improvement in multi core
performance.
It's also 40% more power efficient.
In the GPU department, it offers a 40 percent performance enhancements and around 35 percent
improved power efficiency.
The chip can also support 8K video recording at 30fps and 4K at 150 fps.
Let me clarify, this does not mean that the Galaxy S10 will have 8K video recording.
You'd need a 33MP camera to achieve 8K recording, and so I'm sure the S10 will not have a 33MP
lens, instead I think it'll be again a 12MP setup like on the S9.
It's cool that it supports 4K at 150fps now but again I don't think we would see this
on the S10.
I'm hoping they would enable 4K at 120fps.
The Exynos 9810 chip on the Galaxy S9 supports 4K at 120 but still they didn't enable it,
because Snapdragon 845 could only do 4K at 60.
So I'm hoping the Snapdragon 855 supports 4K at 120 this time so that we can at least
get to experience a higher frame rate.
By the way, the Exynos 9820 is fabricated on an 8nm LPP FinFET process.
Kinda disappointed here, I was expecting 7nm process, rumors say it got delayed for some
reason.
But if the chip indeed offers these performance gains in real life, I don't think it would
matter if it's 7 or 8nm.
The chip looks great on paper for now, let's wait and see how it performs in real life.
So to improve its margins, Samsung is now said to source more components from China
starting with the Galaxy S10.
Cameras and antennas are what they're sourcing.
They're doing this because not only are the parts cheaper to source, but Samsung is now
confident that the quality has greatly improved in recent years, so there is no point in paying
more for the same thing, when you can get it for a lot cheaper in China.
Apple does this all the time, that's the reason their profit margin is so high.
By the way, Samsung already sources components for a few budget and mid-range smartphones,
the Galaxy S10 will be the first flagship to do this.
Let's see how much of an impact this does on their profit margin.
That being said, let me know your thoughts on this down in the comments and I'll see
you'll tomorrow...Peace out!