Exynos VS Snapdragon. Samsung VS Qualcomm. Who is going to be the winner?
Most smartphone manufacturers rely on Qualcomm for their chipsets, CPUs, GPUs, and pretty much the biggest part of the phone's internals. Samsung, on the other hand, is using its own chipset: Exynos. Or at least it does on some of their models.
Samsung isn't primarily a chipset manufacturer. But, since they've got Exynos and they are using it on some of their phones, let's put it to the test against Qualcomm's chipset, shall we?
Exynos VS Snapdragon: Benchmark
The first thing that we're going to be checking out are some benchmarks. And since the Galaxy S10 series is the latest series from Samsung that uses the Exynos chipset, we're going to use that for our comparisons against Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855.
Let's start with the video of the YouTuber: Gary Explains. He's using the Speed Test G benchmark. So, do keep that in mind.
As you can see, the Snapdragon 855 quickly takes the lead. And just when it looks like the Exynos is going to catch up, it quickly falls behind when gaming and multitasking come in play.
To be fair, the Exynos chipset is using a Mali GPU while Qualcomm is using the Adreno series. And it's well known that most, if not all Mali GPUs, are terrible in gaming performance. At least compared to Adreno. So, it's no surprise that the Snapdragon 855 goes ahead in gaming.
The thing is that the Exynos 9820 also loses in multi-threaded performance. That may become an issue in certain cases like with multitasking or demanding apps.
Overall, no matter how you look at it, the Exynos 9820 lost this battle.
How About a Second Chance?
Other websites like PhoneArena have also performed similar tests with other benchmark tools.
Starting off with Antutu and Geekbench, the Snapdragon 855 takes the lead once more. And that's by quite a big margin.
Geekbench gives mixed results. Exynos wins in single-core performance, but loses in multi-threaded power.
Judging by those results, we'd say that each chipset has its own pros and cons. The Snapdragon may perform better on apps that rely a lot on single-core performance but it can also fall behind on multitasking or on apps that rely on multi-core performance.
Moving on to the graphics benchmark, the Exynos takes a huge step forward and beats the Snapdragon 855 with a difference of almost 20FPS.
Now, this should be good, but something doesn't sound right here. Adreno GPUs are known for delivering the best performance in the mobile world. But, the Snapdragon 855 is severely worse here. Even in the previous benchmark, Adreno was much better in gaming performance.
We're not sure why that happened. It may be that different GPUs perform better or worse depending on the game and what API it's using or something.
Still, at the end of the day, the Exynos 9820 wins this battle. PhoneArena checked for internet browsing performance as well. But, as expected, the Exynos lost that battle. After all, we've been consistently watching it lose any CPU performance battle; except for single-core performance.
When it comes to battery life, we got mixed results. There were times where the Exynos chipset gave better results, and there were times where the Snapdragon lasted longer. So, let's make this one a tie.
How About Real-Life Usage?
Benchmarks are one thing. Real-life usage is another. Although many of us like using benchmarks to display how powerful our devices are (or how badly we need to upgrade), real-life usage often shows that the difference isn't as big as we originally thought.
So, how about this case? Well, it turns out that there really isn't a clear victor.
By escalating the Exynos VS Snapdragon battle into a casual usage scenario, you can see that there are times where the Snapdragon pulls ahead, while in other cases it's the Exynos that wins.
Gaming performance seemed to be identical for the most part as well. While there is no FPS comparison for hardcore gamers, we can see no major differences with the naked eye; even if the video is at 30 FPS.
Conclusion
So, when everything is said and done, who is the winner? Based on what you've seen here and other blogs as well, which chipset would you choose? Let us know in the comments section down below!
We're gonna go ahead and say that it's more or less a tie. Sometimes Exynos comes ahead. Sometimes it's the Snapdragon.
At the end of the day, both the Snapdragon 855 and the Exynos 9820 are so powerful that you're unlikely to notice a difference in everyday usage. But, still, if you want every little piece of performance that you can get, including gaming, we'd recommend going with the Snapdragon variant.
If you don't have the choice of picking up a specific chipset, don't stress too much about it. As we mentioned before, both the Exynos and the Snapdragon super powerful and chances are that you won't notice the difference.
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