The Galaxy S22 is now available for preorder, and you can score a few great deals if you order before the February 25th release date. But there might be buyers out there who will want to wait for more detailed hands-on experiences with the phone before committing their money towards a new Samsung flagship. Galaxy S22 benchmarks are part of that early hands-on experience, and we have even more results that show exactly what sort of performance the Exynos 2200 version has to offer.
The new benchmarks show that the Exynos 2200 System-on-Chip might be a significant letdown. The Galaxy S22 versions featuring Samsung’s own SoC will offer worse performance than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 models. We already know from a recent benchmark comparison that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Galaxy S22 Ultra is no match for the iPhone 13 Pro Max. But the Exynos 2200 fares even worse than that in benchmarks. Samsung’s latest SoC can hardly match the A13 Bionic in these tests, which is the Apple SoC that powers the 2019 iPhone 11.
Samsung’s Exynos 2200 custom SoC
Samsung made a big deal about its Exynos 2200 chips in the past few months. The teasers started last year when AMD mentioned its partnership with Samsung, teasing game console GPU experiences coming to mobile phones. We expected the Galaxy Z Fold 3 to be the first Samsung phone with an AMD GPU, but that wasn’t the case.
Then Samsung started teasing an Exynos 2200 event for January, several weeks before the Galaxy S22 Unpacked press conference. But then the Korean company quietly postponed the event, prompting speculation that the Exynos 2200 had been canceled.
Samsung went on to unveil the Exynos 2200 SoC, signaling that the chip will be equipped in some Galaxy S22 versions. But then something strange happened. Samsung did not brag about major performance or efficiency gains for the Exynos 2200. That’s something you would expect from a next-gen series of processors that will power the next-gen flagship smartphones.
In turn, this prompted speculation that the Exynos 2200 would disappoint. Or that the SoC would lead to overheating issues while trying to match the competition.
Galaxy S22 benchmark tests
This brings us to two independent Galaxy S22 benchmark tests that compared the Exynos 2200 SoC to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. One of these tests also covers Apple’s A-series SoCs that power the iPhone.
German blog Computer Base listed Exynos 2200 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 scores for various GPU and CPU benchmarks. The Exynos 2200 is no match for the newest Snapdragon chip, which indicates that the best Galaxy S22 experience will be available to buyers securing a Qualcomm version of the phone.
The Exynos 2200 doesn’t lose just in GPU tests (below) but also in CPU tests (above). The SoC is barely able to match the Apple A13 Bionic. That’s the chip that powers all iPhone 11 phones that came out in 2019 and the 2020 iPhone SE version.
Separately, YouTuber Erdi Özüağ (via NotebookCheck) actually had his hands on both the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Exynos 2200 Galaxy S22 phones.
The results he posted in his benchmark video tell the same story. The Exynos 2200’s Xclipse 920 CPU might come with AMD’s RDNA 2-based architecture. But it’s no match for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’s Adreno 730. The Exynos 2200 scored lower than the Qualcomm SoC in 3DMark Wildlife tests and GFXBench Manhattan offscreen tests. The scores mirror Computer Base’s findings.
iPhone 11 and iPhone SE are still available
Benchmark results tell only part of the story. The Galaxy S22 models running on Exynos 2200 SoCs will still deliver great mobile experiences. They’ll be faster than older flagships, and Samsung can still optimize the performance via software updates.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Samsung is nowhere near ready to challenge the Snapdragon dominance. And it can’t touch the A-series SoC models that Apple makes. Even Samsung fans like Ice Universe keep criticizing Samsung’s inability to compete in this field.
As an aside, the iPhone 11 and iPhone SE (2020) are still available from Apple. The company will probably discontinue both of them later this year. The iPhone SE 3 will replace the second-gen model in the coming months. Then, the arrival of the iPhone 14 series this fall will probably come alongside the iPhone 11’s retirement.
