Samsung Exynos 9810: The chip that powers the Samsung Galaxy S9

26 Feb 2018

Christopher Minasians

Samsung’s latest chipset takes aim at Apple by integrating 3D face scanning and supporting HEVC codecs for 4K recordings

Samsung’s latest and greatest smartphone processor is here. The South Korean manufacturer has been showing off the Exynos 9810 chipset that powers the Galaxy S9 and S9+.

It’s designed to take on Apple’s A11 Bionic, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 and Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 970 – three chips that are set to feature in numerous high-end phones throughout the year.

If you’re wondering what the big deal is, you might be surprised by some of the new silicon’s capabilities. Here’s everything you need to know about Samsung’s second-generation 10nm chip, which powers the Galaxy S9 and S9+.

READ NEXT: Samsung Galaxy S9 review

Samsung Exynos 9810: Snappy performance

The Exynos 9810 will pack quite a punch. With an eight-core 2.9GHz processor, it’s Samsung’s fastest ever processor – faster even than the 2.3GHz Exynos 8895, found in the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+.

But the benefit isn’t just about clock speeds. The company has also optimised the chip’s single-core capabilities and upped its multi-core performance by around 40%. This means apps will open faster, multitasking will be smoother – and the increased efficiency should even translate to a boost in battery life. I’ve yet to benchmark it against the A11 Bionic, but I hope it’ll pack the same blistering single-core performance.

Samsung Exynos 9810: A better camera

Graphics performance has been upgraded too. The integrated ARM Mali-972 GPU features full support for 10-bit HEVC and VP9 codecs, which means your 4K recordings take up less storage space – while, at the same time, thanks to clever post-processing, can contain more detail than ever before.

Like the Snapdragon 845, the Exynos 9810 also supports higher resolution photography, and performs better in low-light shots, with less image noise than its predecessor.

As if that weren’t enough, the new chipset features a dual-ISP too, which means it can support up to four separate image sensors. However, the regular Galaxy S9 only features a single rear-facing camera, though, the S9+ has a dual rear-facing camera. The dual-ISP also enables advanced image stabilisation at resolutions up to 4K UHD.

Samsung Exynos 9810: Improved facial recognition

Facial recognition and iris scanning aren’t anything new – as we saw both technologies featured in the Galaxy S8. Samsung clearly intends to improve scanning speed and accuracy. For that reason, the Exynos 9810 uses neural network-based deep learning for 3D face scanning, as well as recognising objects and people in photos. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s similar to the Kirin 970, found in the Huawei Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro and Honor View 10.

Samsung Exynos 9810: Boosted internet speeds

As a final bonus, the new chip features an ultrafast 1.2Gbits/sec LTE modem, similar to the one announced a couple of months ago for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 flagship chipset. That remarkable downlink speed is achieved through 6x carrier aggregation, with uplink speeds up to 200Mbits/sec. In other words, fast internet.

Samsung Exynos 9810: Early verdict

The Exynos 9810 is a worthy rival to the latest and greatest chips on the market today. It promises to challenge the raw processing speeds and facial recognition capabilities of the Apple A11 Bionic, be as intelligent as the HiSilicon Kirin 970, and match the internet speeds and camera capabilities of the Snapdragon 845. If it’s as good as it sounds, 2018 is set up for a phenomenal year of mobile technology.

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