Unlike the majority of Android smartphone manufacturers, Samsung has developed its own in-house System-on-Chip (SoC) for mobile since the year 2010, back when the original Samsung Galaxy S was released. We’ve all come to know this series of SoCs as the “Exynos” line, and Samsung has been releasing new models every year since 2010. Unsurprisingly, the company is expected to have prepared yet another high-end Exynos SoC for the year 2017, and the first rumors exploring the chipset’s capabilities have now emerged.
Sina Weibo user and leakster going by the (translated) name of “i Ice Universe” recently blogged about Samsung’s next Exynos chipset and claimed to have knowledge of some of the silicon’s characteristics. For now, the chipset is being referred to as the “Exynos 8895”, and according to the source, it will be manufactured on a 10-nanometer process, which would make it both more powerful and power efficient compared to 14-nm chips. The Exynos 8895 will reportedly have a maximum power draw of only 5 watts, and will be capable of CPU clock speeds of up to 3.0 GHz per core which, needless to say, is unprecedented in the world of mobile processors. Furthermore, the chipset’s image processing performance has apparently been improved by 70% to 80%, and the source adds that the “earlier version” of the Exynos 8895 is able to score 2301 points in Geekbench single-thread tests, and a whopping 7019 in multi-thread benchmarks. As a point of reference, the Samsung Galaxy S7 powered by the Exynos 8890 is able to score 1806 points and 5213 points in single and multi-thread tests respectively, whereas the Snapdragon 820 variant scores 1550 and 3864 points in the same benchmark.
Regardless of these new rumors, history indicates that Samsung is extremely likely to release a new in-house Exynos chipset next year, but then again Samsung is just as likely to meet opposition from Qualcomm and the rumored Snapdragon 830 SoC. Either way, the alleged Exynos 8895 is expected to power the Samsung Galaxy S8 series which should be unveiled in the first quarter of 2017, and not unlike this year’s Samsung Galaxy S7, the sequel will probably be launched in two main variants: one powered by Qualcomm and the other by Samsung’s own chipset. Until more details emerge, keep in mind that all the specifications mentioned above are not officially confirmed and thus they remain subject to change.