As promised, Samsung has officially unveiled its first-ever 5nm mobile chipset, Exynos 1080, in China today. The Korean giant had already started talking about this chipset and revealed some of its key specifications earlier this week. And today, we’ve learned almost everything about the Exynos 1080 chipset, which will be the first 5nm chipset, made for Android smartphones. It follows in Apple A14 Bionic‘s footsteps, which was the world’s first 5nm mobile chipset.
Exynos 1080 Specifications
The Exynos 1080 is a successor to last year’s 8nm Exynos 980 SoC found aboard the Vivo X30 series. The Exynos 980 also powered popular mid-range Samsung phones such as Galaxy A51 5G and Galaxy 71 5G. The Exynos 1080 is an octa-core chipset based on the efficient 5nm EUV FinFET process node. It includes 4 Cortex-A78 cores and 4 Cortex-A55 cores.
Samsung follows the 1+3+4 architecture for the Exynos 1080. You get a Cortex-A78 core clocked at 2.8Ghz, three Cortex-A78 cores clocked at 2.6GHz, and four Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 2.0GHz. This is coupled with the ARM Mali-G78 M10 GPU, and well, Samsung claims that you will get a 2x performance boost on both the CPU and GPU front when compared to its predecessor.
You will also find an integrated 5G modem, which supports both mmWave and sub-6GHz networks. Samsung touts that the Exynos 1080 can offer peak download speeds up to 5.1Gbps, which is great. You will also find the latest WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 to round up the connectivity options. The chipset supports up to WQHD+ displays with a 90Hz refresh rate and Full-HD+ display with a 144Hz refresh rate, which is amazing.
We can expect to see more smartphones with a high refresh rate display in the coming months as Xiaomi, Oppo, and others are also rumored to bake an Exynos chipset into their phones.
The Exynos 1080 chipset also supports the latest LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage to maximize day-to-day performance. You also have a dedicated NPU and DSP to handle AI tasks, voice assistants, and demanding AR/ VR applications. The ISP (image signal processing) unit aboard this chipset supports up to six sensors and up to 200MP captures. It supports 4K @ 60 FPS video recording, along with HDR10+ and 10-bit color support.
Also, it is also important to mention that Samsung is utilizing a new AISP architecture with the Exynos 1080, which utilizes both the ISP and NPU unit for advanced image processing. The AI capabilities of the chipset can help better adjust the exposure, the white balance, saturation, and more.
First Smartphone Powered by Exynos 1080
Which will be the first smartphone to be powered by the Exynos 1080? You must have already seen the leaks and well, they are true. Vivo will be the first smartphone maker to adopt Samsung’s Exynos 1080 SoC. The Vivo X60 and X60 Pro, launching in China soon, will likely be the first smartphones to be powered by this 5nm chipset.
Also, if you are not already aware, this is not Samsung’s flagship chipset for next year. Exynos 2100 is rumored to take that spot and will be baked into the upcoming Galaxy S21 series launching earlier than usual next year. The Galaxy S21 series is rumored to arrive in January as opposed to the February launch schedule.
