Recent speculations have indicated that Samsung may well look to expand its logic chip business by opening up its Exynos range of mobile chipsets to be used by third-party OEMs in their mobile devices. Prior reports have already indicated as much, and now, a whole new report out of China seems to add fuel to that already raging fire about Samsung looking to compete on equal terms with traditional chipmakers like Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel and Nvidia, by offering up its own Exynos-branded chips to other OEMs. While a report last month seemed to suggest that BlackBerry Inc. might introduce a smartphone powered by an Exynos chipset at some stage next year, the latest report regarding Samsung’s in-house microprocessor range claims that Chinese smartphone maker, Meizu, will actually introduce an Exynos-powered device in the not-so-distant future.
It is worth remembering however that this is still very much a rumor, so a generous pinch of salt may well be in order. While Samsung has been making processing chips in-house for the better part of a decade now – first under the ‘Hummingbird’ brand and now dubbed as ‘Exynos’ – it hasn’t really put a lot of emphasis on the standalone mobile chipset market – until now, that is. However, keen observers and industry watchers will note that Meizu is already one of the very few third-party OEMs to have launched an Exynos-powered handset called the Meizu Pro 5. Earlier as well, the company had launched a Hummingbird-powered device called the Meizu M9. So now, with Samsung looking to aggressively expand its logic chip business, it isn’t exactly inconceivable to put two and two together. While devices like Lenovo’s LePhone K860, Meizu’s M9 and Pro 5, along with a few other devices here and there have sported Samsung’s SoCs from time to time, such devices have been few and far between, mostly because Samsung has been reluctant to put its microprocessor business on the same pedestal as its mobile handset business for years.
Now, however, that looks set to change if even a fraction of these reports from various sources have any truth to them whatsoever. Meanwhile, the chipset being mentioned for use in the upcoming Meizu phone is the Exynos 8870, which is believed to be the same chip as the Exynos 8890, but with a lower clock speed for its CPU. There are no more details available about any further differences (or similarities for that matter) between the two, regarding their GPU clock speeds, modems or any other specs. Exynos 8890, of course, is slated to be Samsung’s top-shelf chipset for 2016, and will reportedly adorn the company’s flagship smartphones such as the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. The 8870 meanwhile, is said to conjure up a score of around 2,000 on Geekbench, although, there’s no official confirmation of that from anywhere.