When Samsung launched the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge earlier this year, it was something of a surprise to a lot of the industry, as despite all of the rumors, it still seemed unlikely that Samsung would ship devices in North America with their own Exynos chipset. Eschewing Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chip seemed like a smart move on Samsung’s part not least because the 14 nm process delivered a more efficient, and cooler running chip than the 20 nm process in the 810, but also because the more Samsung in a Samsung phone, the better it is for Samsung’s branding. It seems that, a least according to AnTuTu, that this was a smart move when it comes to performance as well.
When testing smartphones, custom ROMs or just for the hell of it, a lot of users will test their smartphones out using benchmark software. In recent years, China’s AnTuTu has become the de facto benchmarking suite for Android smartphones and tablets. In a recent report published by AnTuTu themselves that looks at the first half of this year, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge scored 67,520 and 63,910 points, respectively. That puts them ahead of Xiaomi’s Mi Note Pro as well as devices like the HTC One M9 running a Snapdragon 810. These tests aren’t conclusive of course, as these are just a selection of results from the first half of 2015 and they don’t take into account multiple tests and that sort of thing.
Still, to see the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge out so far in front of other devices running Snapdragon chips is impressive. Of course, these are just benchmark scores, and just because something can run through one test well, doesn’t mean that real world performance will be the same. On the whole, it looks like things are starting to come together for Samsung on the semiconductor front. As one of the few companies that has perfected the lucrative 14nm process, creating smaller and more efficient chips, it’s no wonder Samsung is starting to go places in the microprocessor world. 2016 is going to be an interesting year with the Snapdragon 820 from Qualcomm, and presumably yet another revision of the Exynos.