If there’s one thing that’s certain about the Galaxy S10, it’s that the phone will be even faster than the Galaxy S9 and Note 9. That’s how smartphone evolution works. Regardless of who makes it, a new phone will always pack better hardware than its predecessors. That’s true whether the phone looks just like last year’s model, or if it sports a novel design. The internal components are what really matter and what make the phone tick. Now a new leak tells us exactly what kind of hardware should make the Galaxy S10 tick, and it looks like we’re in store for some serious speed.
Well-known leaker Ice Universe posted short messages on Weibo and Twitter where he detailed the chips headed to the upcoming Samsung flagship. He said on Weibo that the phone will have an Exynos 9820 processor, the obvious successor of the Exynos 9810 used in the Galaxy S9 and Note 9. The GPU will be a Mali-G76 MP18 chip.
He then actually detailed the CPU on Twitter:
Samsung's next-generation Exynos 9820 will use the 2+2+4 DynamIQ architecture, 2xExynos M4 is the big core, 2xCortex-A75 (or A76) is the medium core, and 4xA55 is the small core. pic.twitter.com/3T5AUbcWhV
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) July 10, 2018
The Exynos 9820 should have eight cores, including two Exynos M4 cores, two Cortex-A75 or A76 cores, and four Cortex-A55 cores.
We’ve heard of the M4 chips before, which are Samsung’s own high-performance cores intended to replace ARM’s Cortex-A76 — that’s ARM’s latest high-end mobile chip design, by the way, which scores even higher in benchmarks, but not as high as Apple’s A11 chip that powers the iPhone X and iPhone 8.
The Mali-G76 GPU, meanwhile, is ARM’s latest mobile graphics processing unit. Built on the 7nm process, the new GPU should deliver even better performance than its predecessor while still offering improved energy efficiency. This component alone should help the Galaxy S10 run complex apps faster than before while using less battery. From AnandTech’s review of the GPU:
All in all, the Mali G76 provides extremely solid advancements – 30% better performance at the same area and power are heavy generational improvements. However while this will greatly improve the competitiveness of Mali GPUs – I don’t think it will be quite sufficient to catch up with the competition.
What’s that competition? Well, Qualcomm makes its own GPUs that go into Snapdragon platforms. And Apple is doing its own GPU thing for the iPhone. Samsung, of course, is also looking to design its own mobile GPU, but the Galaxy S10 doesn’t look like the phone that will be the first to make use of it.
Finally, it should be noted that Samsung will probably make a Snapdragon 855-powered version of the Galaxy S10 as well, and the two phones should deliver roughly the same overall experience.
