Exynos chip takes on Snapdragon 810 - which will make the Samsung Galaxy S6 better?

Galaxy S5
Snapdragon or Exynos, that is the question

There's a lot of debate and numerous rumours regarding whether Samsung will put a Snapdragon 810 chip or an Exynos 7420 in the Galaxy S6.

Traditionally, Samsung uses Snapdragon for its flagships, as do most companies which release their flagships in the west and the Snapdragon 810 is the latest and greatest mobile chip from Qualcomm. But there are reports of overheating issues and talk that Samsung might therefore use an Exynos 7420 instead.

Or maybe it will use both, with some regions getting one and some getting the other. We really don't know at this point. But both chips appear to have now been benchmarked, so we do have an idea of how they compare.

Chip competition

As spotted by Softpedia, Samsung's home-grown Exynos 7420 has achieved a single-core score of 1520 points and a multi-core score of 5478 points. It's assumed that the device it's powering is a Galaxy S6 prototype, but whatever it is it has 3GB of RAM and the chip was clocked at 1.50GHz, which suggests it was the slower four cores that got benchmarked.

Those scores might not mean much in isolation, but in a Geekbench comparison with the Snapdragon 810 you can get an idea of how they stack up.

The 810 was scored in the LG G Flex 2, with 2GB of RAM and again the slower cores were put to the test, clocking at 1.55GHz. It achieved a single-core score of 1292 and a multi-core score of 3604, which in both cases is somewhat lower than its Exynos competitor.

Other differences in the handsets could play a role in the score too of course and benchmark scores don't always translate into real world experiences, but still, if you were worried that Samsung would ditch Qualcomm maybe you should start hoping for it instead.

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.