HiSilicon lately launched its latest Kirin 990 chipset. With the latest Snapdragon 855 chipset, Qualcomm is already dominating with larger shares in the industry. It is one of the most used flagship chip around the world. Every year most of the phones use Qualcomm chipsets because of great stability in performance.
Moreover, the Exynos chipsets are limited to Samsung phones. There is no doubt, Exynos SoCs give hard time to competitors. Its latest high-end SoC Exynos 9825 is a very powerful mobile platform. In this article, we will be comparing the Exynos 9825 vs 9820 vs Snapdragon 855 vs Kirin 990. So without any further ado, Let’s start!
Recommended: Apple A13 Bionic vs A12 vs Kirin 990 5G vs Snapdragon 855 Plus – Antutu-Geekbench benchmark scores
Exynos 9825 vs 9820 vs Snapdragon 855
Hardware and Performance
The Exynos 9825 brings the tri-cluster octa-core CPU with two powerful custom Mangoose M4 cores @2.73GHz, 2x Cortex-A75 cores @2.4GHz, and four power-efficient cores are cloaked @1.9Ghz. Exynos 9820 comes with two powerful cores are pointed at same 2.73GHz, 2x Cortex-A75 cores @2.31GHz and 4x cores @1.95GHz.
Snapdragon 855 is also powered by the octa-core CPU with one powerful cluster clocked @2.84GHz, 3x Kryo 485 cores clock @2.42GHz and 4x restricts to 1.78GHz. The Kirin 990 has 2x Cortex-A76 cores point @2.84GHz, 2x Cortex-A76 cores @2.09GHz and 4x Cortex-A55 cores @1.86GHz. On paper, all looks holding very powerful CPU under the hood. The Exynos 9825 and 9825 performs equally with a slight difference in structure. The Snapdragon 855 is completely built on custom cores.
The Kirin 990 is the latest entry among them all and it has a definite advantage to make some extra advancements. It is built on TSMS’s most advanced 7nm+ EUV node. Exynos 9825 uses 7nm EUV, snapdragon 855 brings 7nm and Exynos 9820 processed on 8nm node. The manufacturing process plays an important role when it comes to power efficiency.
In comparison, Snapdragon 855 appears the least powerful CPU between all. But a more stable and power-efficient chip compared to Exynos 9820. On the other hands, Exynos 9825 / 9820 beat in single-core results, while, in multi-core results, Kirin 990 beats the other three. Overall, all four perform equally good, but Kirin 990 takes a slight lead being the latest one. There is not a big margin between all the processors, but Kirin 990 wins.
GPU Comparison
The Exynos 9825 and 9820 arrive with same Mali -G76 MP12. Snapdragon pairs Adreno 640 GPU and Kirin 990 adopts the Mali-G76 MP16 Graphics Processing Unit. Usually, Mali GPUs are infamous for legginess, but the latest ones are more stable and power-efficient either. Definitely, Adreno 640 has an edge being more stable and less heating issues.
The Mali-G76 MP16 uses insane 16 cores architecture, but it would be interesting to see how it performs in real-life usage. At least on paper, Mali-G76 MP16 seems more powerful, but real-world usage is a different thing. The Qualcomm produces the industry’s best GPU. But this time Mali GPUs are giving a strong competition. Personally, I would prefer Snapdragon 855 for gaming, even though Mali-G76 MP16 has some insane power.
Also Read: Exynos 980 vs Exynos 9820 vs Exynos 9825 Comparison – Antutu, Geekbench scores
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integrated part of the tech industry. By the time passes, it will reach to a revolutionary stage. Semiconductor industry making efforts to implement it in the right way. Already, the latest smartphones have become very smart, thanks to the implementation of AI techniques. The Latest also Kirin 990 chipset emphasizes on Artificial intelligence.
It has a dual-core NPU divided into 1 Big + 1 Tiny core. The higher core handles the powerful tasks and a tiny power efficiently core manages the small AI tasks. The chipset can render real-time videos based on the new Real-Time Multi-Instance Segmentation. It has its own HiAI platform to manage the internal hardware. But it can also work with Facebook’s Tensorflow and Google’s Android NN third-party platforms.
The Snapdragon 855 comes with Hexagon 690 quad-core AI DSP, a very advanced AI chip. It is capable to offer some great features including scene detection, text recognition, super resolutions in snapshots, face authentication, dual and single-camera bokeh. The company claims to deliver 7 trillion AI tasks per second with its latest invention. Further, the AI engine brings support for some popular frameworks such as TensorFlow by Google, Facebook’s Caffe 2, and the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX).
Finally, the Exynos 9825 and 9820 has an integrated NPU unit specifically perform some smart work. The Exynos NPU can take some advanced photography to use for Augmented Reality (AR). Basically, the AR experience has been enhanced on Exynos duo even than before. The chipset likelihood generates on-device AI from object recognition for optimized photos features including usage pattern recognition and faster app pre-loading.
Read More: Kirin 810 vs Snapdragon 730 vs MediaTek Helio G90T – Antutu, GeekBench Benchmark Scores
Benchmark Scores
The Exynos 9825 scores 4,533 points in single-core and 10,611 points in multi-core on Geekbench. The Exynos 9820 follows with 4,474 points in single-core and 10,242 points in multi-core. Moving to the Snapdragon 855, it goes down to 3,438 points in single-core and 10,838 points in multi-core. Lastly, the Kirin 990 tops the multi-core results with 11,644 points. But single-core results are reduced to 3,842 points, slightly lower then Exynos duo.
In Antutu, Snapdragon 855 takes lead with 3,71,954 points. The Exynos 9825 is placed on the second position with 3,69,029 points. Exynos 9820 follows the list with 3,59,817 points. Apart from that, we are eagerly waiting to see Kirin 990 how it performs in Antutu test. To recall, Huawei Mate 30 series will first arrive with Kirin 990 on September 19. So, we have to wait for its official launch to the Antutu scores.
Even though benchmark scores are not the only measure to judge the actual performance, you can only take it as reference. Sometimes, less scoring devices perform better in real-world usage.
Must Read: Kirin 990 5G vs Kirin 980 vs Snapdragon 855 / 855 Plus Comparison – Antutu, GeekBench Scores
Connectivity, Camera and More
It will worth noting that Kirin chipset arrives in two variants, one with 5G support and others only supports 4G. Here, we have included the 4G variant, that doesn’t support 5G. It offers up to 2.3 Gbps download and 1.25 Gbps upload speed. The Snapdragon 855 supports 5G with external Snapdragon X50 5G modem. The chipset delivers up to 2Gbps download and 316 Mbps upload speed. Finally, Exynos 9825 and 9820 arrive with LTE-Advanced Pro modem, that can produce up to 2Gbps download and 316 Mbps upload speeds. We can see all have advanced connectivity option to utilize the potential internet speed.
As for optics, both Exynos 9820 and 9825 support up to Dual 16MP+16M or Single 22MP camera on both sides. The snapdragon can achieve up to whooping 192MP single-camera count. It also supports dual 22MP + 22MP cameras on both front and rear sides. Huawei didn’t provide the camera specs for Kirin 990. But should have at least 48MP camera support. Nevertheless, all the SoCs can record up to 8K video @30fps and amazing slow-motion shots.
The display should support up to 2160 x 3840 pixels 4K UHD resolution on all. But Kirin chipset again didn’t disclose display specs. All four processors support HDR10+ content on their displays respectively. The SoCs support LPDDR4X RAM and faster UFS 3.0 flash storage. Nobody wants to compromise in the RAM and storage department. Faster memory and storage play an important role to utilize the highest potentials. Necessary APIs support is available for all including OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 2.0 and DirectX 12.
Related: Snapdragon 665 vs 710 vs 712 comparisons, Antutu-GeekBench benchmarks
Conclusion – Which one is the better?
Before making any conclusion, I want to make sure all chipsets have their own pros and cons. For example, Exynos 9820 and 9825 offer great CPU power, whether it is single-core or multi-core. The Snapdragon 855 is a balanced chip with the correct utilization of CPU and GPU. However, we don’t have exact numbers to judge the Kirin 990 but is also a very capable processor. It has a very powerful graphics card to bang the competition. Overall, very strong hardware offering from the Huawei.
To be honest, it all depends on your personal preference. The Kirin 990 chip is based on the highly power-efficient latest 7nm+ EUV process. It could be a game-changer for Huawei if it utilizes the potential. We still need to perform more test to recognize the actual performance of the Kirin 990 4G chip. Wrapping it up, I am quite skeptical to choose a single winner. What are your thoughts? Do let’s in below comment section!
And where is Snapdragon 855+??
Sorry, it is not possible to cover everything in a single article. If you are interested to see a high end comparison between Kirin 990 5G vs Snapdragon 855 Plus, please have a look into it: https://tmenet.wpengine.com/featured/apple-a13-bionic-vs-a12-vs-kirin-990-5g-vs-snapdragon-855-plus/
Great article. Thanks for sharing. There is one thing I couldn’t understand, and it’s why Samsung didn’t address the Exynos 9825 variants to the US market? It would be appreciated, If you could just do a detailed article about that. Thank you.
Daven well i have the answer .The Exynos 9825 is europe CPU i dont know the reason
European people want to have Snapdragon in their phones conversely because it is kinda more power-efficient and stable… 🙂