This is kind of strange as we were expecting Samsung to tell us a bit more about the SoC from their side after seeing it well-documented publicly through leaks and reports. Samsung usually does not discuss processors in their Galaxy Unpacked events but this was going to be the exception to the rule considering how important this launch is for Samsung, especially with the new AMD RDNA 2-powered “Xclipse 920” GPU. Samsung didn’t even give us the basic rundown of telling us the specs of the processor, like the clock speeds for instance. But, we still do know that the entire Galaxy S22 series will be offered in Exynos flavors alongside Snapdragon. Exynos 2200 will mainly power Galaxy S22s in Europe, CIS, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, whereas North American regions are limited to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 variants of the phones.
Performance Expectations
Looking back, historically Samsung lifts the curtain on the Galaxy phones processors the day the review embargo lifts. So the details specs of the processors, in this case the Exynos 2200 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, come out weeks after the phones have been announced and reviews go live. But we already have enough reviews about Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in general and it’s the Exynos chip that excites us. For all it’s worth, only a select few media outlets and personalities have gotten the go-ahead of sharing the specs of the Exynos 2200 and Samsung has also disclosed some comparison numbers against its previous-gen Exynos 2100 to some. ComputerBase reports that there is only a 100Mhz discrepancy in the Exynos and Snapdragon versions of the Galaxy S22 series with the former trailing behind. However, the more exciting revelation comes from TechAltar who’s tweeted that the performance uplifts of the Exynos 2200 over the Exynos 2100. Surprisingly enough, the new Xclipse 920 GPU is only 17% faster than the one in the Exynos 2100 and the CPU performance sees even less of an improvement. By far the most improvement has been made in the machine learning/AI department but that wasn’t the reason why people were looking forward to this chip in the first place. https://twitter.com/TechAltar/status/1491454363923279873?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1491454363923279873%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fvideocardz.com%2Fnewz%2Fsamsung-exynos-2200-rdna2-gpu-offically-17-faster-than-exynos-2100-mali-78 I know we’re starting to see a bit of a theme here but Samsung has also kept the specs of the GPU under wraps, mostly. Some rumors dating back to January 2022 have suggested that the Xclipse 920 will run at 1.3 – 1.4Ghz which is quite an impressive number and much faster than Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. However, do keep in mind that this comes on top of the supposed struggles Samsung has had behind the scenes trying to achieve a high target frequency for their Exynos 2200 chip, which means this number could’ve been even higher. Samsung Galaxy S22 is officially still under review embargo with only first impressions out now. So we’ll have to wait a few weeks before we get to test and benchmark the SoC and its Xclipse 920 GPU once and for all. That being said, one YouTube channel by the name of “Bart Check” included this short clip of Asphalt 9: Legends running on a Exynos 2200 Galaxy S22 Ultra, but that’s about it when it comes to real-world gaming impressions of the chip so far.
On top of all this, Samsung is likely preparing a major “day one” sort of software update for its entire Galaxy S22 lineup that will unlock some additional performance along with fixing some bugs here and there in time for its retail release and before the reviews come out. That will allow for some interesting competitions between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’s Adreno 730 GPU and the Exynos 2200 Xclipse 920 GPU once the review embargo lifts.
