If there’s one Android handset that’s akin to the iPhone, it’s Samsung’s newest Galaxy S cellphone. Greater than the Pixel 6 Professional, OnePlus 9, or regardless of the newest Android taste of the month is, the Galaxy S22 line provides a stage of design, options, and aptitude that’s nearly Apple-like, with an simple id and affect over the remainder of the trade.

However whereas iPhone and Galaxy followers can argue over who has the higher show, design, and digital camera, there’s no denying that Apple is the clear chief relating to the processor. Samsung, the world’s largest chipmaker, nonetheless makes use of Qualcomm’s newest top-of-the-line flagship Snapdragon chip for its North American Galaxy telephones, whereas the remainder of the world will get Samsung’s homegrown Exynos processor. The Snapdragon normally comes shut, however neither can match Apple’s energy, processing, and effectivity.

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That was supposed to alter with the latest Exynos chip. After Samsung launched the Exynos 2100 in 2021 and dumped its customized CPU cores for the Cortex-X1 CPU core, it put a renewed emphasis on efficiency and energy effectivity. Equally, this 12 months’s Exynos 2200 chip turned the main focus to graphics efficiency with a brand new Samsung Xclipse GPU primarily based on AMD’s RDNA 2 structure. When it launched, Samsung boasted that the chip would allow “the final word cell phone gaming expertise” and for some time, it appeared just like the worldwide S22 would possibly lastly give Apple’s flagship iPhone chip a run for its cash.

So we had been excited to check it out. We already know that Qualcomm makes nice cellular processors that rival Apple’s A-Collection chips, however a high-level Exynos chip from Samsung might be a game-changer. If an S22 with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is likely one of the greatest telephones on the planet, think about how a lot larger it might be with Samsung controlling the entire stack with a high-powered Exynos chip.

Sadly, that’s not the case. Our colleagues at Tech Advisor have examined and reviewed the Galaxy S22+ with the Exynos 2200 processor and, properly, the outcomes should not nice. It’s notable that they nonetheless gave the cellphone 4 stars, which means it’s a superb machine regardless of the benchmarks right here. In a vacuum it’s loads quick too, but it surely’s onerous to not marvel why Samsung followers are placing up with efficiency like this when the iPhone is to this point forward.

That’s not a lot of an enchancment over the Exynos 2100‘s multi-core rating of three,263 and nowhere close to a breakthrough in efficiency. The CPU numbers right here aren’t even higher than a two-year-old iPhone 11 with an A13 processor. Granted, CPU scores aren’t every part, however with digital camera and communication options demanding an increasing number of assets every year, telephones want as a lot energy as they’ll get. Significantly once you’re spending a thousand {dollars} plus for a brand new handset that claims to be “game-changing.”

It’s not significantly better relating to the neural processing engine. Utilizing Geekbench ML, Apple’s A15 has a TensorFlow Lite CPU rating of 950 and a Core ML rating of 2511, whereas the Exynos 2200 barely tops 400. And that’s with Samsung boasting that the Exynos 2200’s NPU “has doubled in comparison with its predecessor, permitting extra calculations in parallel and enhancing the AI efficiency.” So…yikes.

And it’s even worse once you take a look at graphics efficiency. The place final 12 months’s Exynos 2100 truly bested the Snapdragon 888 utilizing 3D Mark’s Wildlife check, the S22+ barely tops final 12 months’s rating and isn’t in the identical league because the A15.

That’s the largest disappointment of the Exynos 2200. Samsung teamed up with AMD for the Eclipse GPU facet with a novel hybrid graphic processor that’s “positioned between the console and the cellular graphics processor.” Samsung describes it as such: Xclipse is the mixture of ‘X’ that represents Exynos, and the phrase ‘eclipse’. Like an eclipse, the Xclipse GPU will deliver an finish to the outdated period of cellular gaming and mark the beginning of an thrilling new chapter.

The one factor that’s eclipsed is its efficiency. Not solely did it barely beat final 12 months’s Wild Life rating (5,852) it’s trounced by each the A15 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which topped 10,000 in reported exams. GPU efficiency is extraordinarily vital in at present’s telephones and never only for video games—smartphone UIs have turn into extraordinarily superior and the GPU is answerable for ensuring every part runs, rolls, and renders easily.

Michael Simon/IDG

That efficiency hole shall be much more of a problem in 4 years when Samsung guarantees the S22 will get One UI 8. With the launch of the S22, Samsung additionally introduced it can ship 4 years of One UI and Android OS upgrades, which would require a cellphone that may deal with 4 years of use. These benchmarks don’t precisely give us confidence.

The Galaxy S22 with the Exynos 2200 chip was alleged to be the cellphone that lastly surpassed the iPhone, and the Exynos chip was rumored to land in Samsung’s subsequent Galaxy E book. But when that is the perfect Samsung can do, maybe they need to simply quit altogether.