Samsung Galaxy S23 FE: Snapdragon vs. Exynos compared
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE: Snapdragon vs. Exynos compared
We compare the Snapdragon and the Exynos versions of the Galaxy S23 FE. The Galaxy S23 FE is a refresh of the rather popular Galaxy S21 FE, improving the...
As expected the Snapdragon has better battery life. It lasts 13.2% longer than the Exynos in their battery test (9:45h vs 8:28h) with the biggest differences being in calls over an LTE network (34:15h vs 28:26h) and video playback scores (11:27h vs 9:16h). The Snapdragon version is superior in their web browsing and gaming sections too.
There's surprisingly not much of a difference in performance with the Exynos version getting slightly better Geekbench scores. It's also a smidge better in the GPU stability test. However the Snapdragon version pulls ahead in the GPU tests and throttles slightly less in the CPU stability test.
With regards to the camera, it seems like the Snapdragon version produces sharper images.
With Samsung dual sourcing SoCs next year it's clear there are going to be significant differences since different foundries are going to fab both chips for that generation. The difference in battery life should be even bigger with the S24 as the Snapdragon version will be fabbed by TSMC who's process is superior to the 4nm LPP+ that will be used for the Exynos 2400. There's also history of the Exynos version performing poorly at launch.
Dang. Those are two rough chips to recommend at the end of 2023. The 8Gen1 isn't as bad as the 810 that would melt solder, but it's not gonna age as gracefully as the 865 or the 8Gen2. Sad that Samsung's own design is still poorer than the 8Gen1.
Unfortunately both chips were fabbed by Samsung Foundry. Tensor is also fabbed by then which explains the overheating, poor efficiency and throttling. I really hope Samsung can catch up with TSMC with 3nm but would be wary of a Samsung fabbed SoC until they prove they've caught up. Qualcomm moved from Samsung to TSMC for the 8+ Gen 1 because Samsung weren't meeting their targets as they had low yield. The yield issue seems to be fixed according to some media outlets but doesn't seem like the fab itself has improved.
I'm happy I bought S23 since it is the only one released with Snapdragon as it seems... Unfortunately Exynos just isn't there...
How in the world does the SoC affect the camera quality?
I don't believe it.
At the end of the day, the camera system is recording data to be processed by the CPU/GPU. The output of CPU/GPU instructions should be exactly the same between chips (if not, something is seriously wrong).
Every manufacturer is now using computational photography and both phones use a different ISP. You're probably going to end up with two slightly different images even if you use the same SoC on an identical phone as they may end up using a slightly different condition in auto mode.
It depends on the ISP(Image signal processor). Companies can tune. But, there can, and will be minor differences between different Socs.