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Your fancy new flagship smartphone is probably powered by a Snapdragon, Exynos or Kirin mobile platform, but just how fast are they really?
Find out which is the fastest flagship mobile SoC in our little performance comparison!
Snapdragon vs Exynos vs Kirin : Battle Of The Flagships!
So we managed to get our hands on the fastest mobile platforms available in the market today :
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ (Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+)
- Samsung Exynos 990 (Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G)
- HUAWEI Kirin 990 (HUAWEI MatePad Pro)
| Snapdragon 865+ |
Exynos 990 |
Kirin 990 |
|
| Process | 7 nm N7P | 7 nm EUV | 7 nm EUV |
| CPU Cores |
1 x Kryo 585 Gold (3.09 GHz) 3 x Kryo 585 Gold (2.42 GHz) 4 x Kryo 585 Silver (1.8 GHz) |
2 x Exynos M5 (2.7 GHz) 2 x Cortex-A76 (2.5 GHz) 4 x Cortex-A55 (2.0 GHz) |
2 x Cortex-A76 (2.86 GHz) 2 x Cortex-A76 (2.09 GHz) 4 x Cortex-A55 (1.8 GHz) |
| GPU | Adreno 650 | Mali-G77 MP11 | Mali-G76 MC16 |
| Memory Support |
LPDDR5 | LPDDR5 | LPDDR5 |
| Storage Support |
UFS 3.0 | UFS 3.0 | UFS 3.0 |
| 5G Modem | Snapdragon X55 (Separate) |
Exynos 5123 (Separate) |
Balong 5000 (Integrated) |
Now you may be wondering – what about MediaTek? They get a pass because they cheat at benchmarks.
Snapdragon vs Exynos vs Kirin : TLDR Summary
For those who are too lazy to drill down into the results, here’s a quick and dirty summary.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus is definitely the superior mobile platform.
In most benchmarks, it was significantly faster than both the Samsung Exynos 990 and the HUAWEI Kirin 990.
| Snapdragon 865+ |
Exynos 990 |
Kirin 990 |
|
| PCMark Work 2.0 | Winner | -16.3% | -30.6% |
| Computer Vision | Winner | -16.9% | -23.2% |
| 3DMark Vulkan | Winner | -11.4% | -33.7% |
| 3DMark OpenGL | Winner | -4.5% | -30.1% |
| Geekbench Multi-Core | Winner | -3.2% | -3.7% |
| Geekbench Single-Core | -21.1% | -2.2% | Winner |
| AnTuTu Overall | Winner | -9.5% | -22.8% |
| Average | Winner | -6.1% | -21.4% |
You are unlikely to notice the small 6% performance difference between the Snapdragon 865+ and the Exynos 990.
However, the 21% performance deficit of the HUAWEI Kirin 990 versus the Snapdragon 865+ will be noticeable. So will its 14% performance deficit against the Exynos 990.
Even if TSMC was allowed to continue making Kirin 990 for HUAWEI, it is no longer a competitive flagship mobile platform.
Snapdragon vs Exynos vs Kirin : PCMark Work 2.0
| Snapdragon 865+ | Exynos 990 | Kirin 990 | |
| Work 2.0 Score | Winner | -16.3% | -30.6% |
| Web Browsing 2.0 | Winner | -27.2% | -43.3% |
| Video Editing | Winner | -18.5% | -26.2% |
| Writing 2.0 | Winner | -12.0% | -13.4% |
| Photo Editing 2.0 | -10.7% | Winner | -45.6% |
| Data Manipulation | Winner | -29.6% | -26.9% |
Snapdragon vs Exynos vs Kirin : PCMark Computer Vision
This is a benchmark that tests the AI capabilities of these mobile platforms :
- image recognition with TensorFLow
- graphical barcode scanning with ZXing
- optical character recognition with Tesseract
| Snapdragon 865+ | Exynos 990 | Kirin 990 | |
| Computer Vision | Winner | -16.9% | -23.2% |
| TensorFlow | -44.2% | -5.0% | Winner |
| ZXing | Winner | -18.1% | -3.6% |
| Tesseract | -19.9% | Winner | -56.6% |
Next Page > Snapdragon vs Exynos vs Kirin : 3DMark | Geekbench | AnTuTu
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