Samsung Galaxy S7’s Snapdragon 820 vs. Exynos 8890 Preliminary Showdown

Recently, Samsung’s Snapdragon 820-powered variant topped the charts in AnTuTu benchmark test. This chipset trumped Apple’s powerful A9 as well. Now, Samsung Galaxy S7’s Snapdragon 820-powered model has been compared to the same device’s Exynos 8890 variant.

Samsung enjoyed a warm working relationship with the chipmaker Qualcomm until the Galaxy S6, released in 2015. Before 2015, Samsung used both Qualcomm chip and its own homegrown Exynos silicon for the yearly flagships. Qualcomm one usually powers the device headed to the U.S.

However, with Galaxy S6, Samsung stuck to its own Exynos chipset due to the critical overheating problems experienced by Snapdragon 810-powered handsets. Not to forget, this S810 chipset almost wrecked the chances of the already struggling HTC with its One M9 flagship.

But then, in 2016, after getting assurance that there’s no overheating issues with Qualcomm’s next-generation chipset, Samsung decided to give Snapdragon silicon one more chance. Hence, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge come powered by both quad-core Snapdragon 820 and octa-core Exynos 8890 chipsets. The curiosity around which chipset is the best among the two has always stayed strong.

It goes without saying that, the main difference between the two chipsets is the CPU count i.e. quad-core vs. octa-core. The difference in cores apparently does have a modest effect on the performance.

According to Phone Arena, Samsung Galaxy S7’s Snapdragon 820 won six out of nine custom tests conducted by the tech portal with the help of various benchmark testing sites. This means, the Qualcomm variant does have an edge over the Exynos-powered model. But the Exynos variant apparently stood-out in web browsing, while Qualcomm silicon was at its worst in the same category.