Some members of the Galaxy A (2018) smartphone series may be powered by the Exynos 7885 and Exynos 9610, Samsung’s upcoming mobile chips which the South Korean tech giant has supposedly been developing since at least this summer, one industry insider said on Monday. Both silicons are believed to be mid-range offerings, with some sources previously claiming that the Exynos 9610 will debut in the final quarter of the year. Provided that both reports are accurate, the Galaxy A (2018) lineup may be officially announced in late 2017, even if it isn’t released before Q1 2018.
The Exynos 9610 is understood to be more powerful than the Exynos 7885 and could have a performance similar to that of the Exynos 8895, Samsung’s flagship system-on-chip powering the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus, and the newly released Galaxy Note 8. Based on that information, the SoC is likely meant to compete in the upper mid-range segment of the market and take on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660, though it’s still unlikely to be utilized by third-party manufacturers and will presumably only be found within Samsung’s own offerings. The Exynos 9610 is said to ship with eight 64-bit cores, a high-performance quad-core ARM Cortex A73 cluster clocked at a maximum operating frequency of 2.4GHz and an energy-efficient Cortex A53 configuration whose clock speed is still unreported. The Mali-G71 MP20 GPU is also believed to be part of the package, as is a fully integrated LTE modem, according to previous rumors. Raw performance aside, the sole possibility of Samsung releasing a 10nm mid-range SoC would likely increase the competitiveness of its Galaxy A and Galaxy C lineups by providing them with a degree of energy efficiency which is unprecedented in this price segment. Still, older rumors pointed to the Exynos 9610 being a 14nm SoC which could be a more realistic scenario considering related development costs.
The weaker Exynos 7885 will supposedly be manufactured on the 14nm FinFET process, with some previous reports stating that the SoC will be found within the Galaxy A7 (2018). The information revealed on Monday suggested that not all regions are set to receive the Galaxy A (2018) models powered by Samsung’s latest mid-range chips, though it remains to be seen whether that means the handsets will also adopt other SoCs or that the Korean tech giant isn’t planning to release them on a global level.