In my last post I mentioned that I was lucky enough to get a hold of Samsung’s new Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G. I don’t currently use a 5G network but have the option to do so later, it’s not a big deal right now. I was lucky enough to have access to the Snapdragon (SD) version and I have to say it has been a treat. Using the phone over the last few days has been a treat and the super-fast charging that run off a 45W draw is blisteringly fast. Expandable memory and 12GB of ram has been my choice for this generation, my previous phone had nowhere near 12GB let alone 16GB so multitasking is definitely going to be ramped up over the next few days. The 120Hz refresh rate is something that has been touted as a novelty, but high refresh rates have been around for a while now and there’s more available content for users to try out on the phone to take advantage of the buttery smooth screen refresh. Personally, I have kept this on simply to enjoy zipping around between menus and applications. I might get bored of that but I haven’t just yet.
The SD version of the phone has been rolled out across North America, Japan, China and Korea while the rest of the world gets the in-house developed SoC, Exynos 990. Samsung, a research and development powerhouse are very proud of their products, or are they? Ever since the S10 series, I have known the Exynos to be the inferior SoC against the Snapdragon. The performance loss has been documented in many places and I’d have thought that Samsung may have wanted to right their mistakes, but it seems they’ve decided to push their tech on markets they might get away with it. Even at home in Korea they’ve decided to ship with the super SD model, an ironic yet telling state of affairs. If you want an in depth review, check out this piece put out by anandtech, it’s a lengthy read but puts things into perspective:
The Exynos is plagued with performance issues and there are over 25% reductions in performance, it’s outright robbery in some sense as Samsung charge the equivalent value of the Snapdragon version in Europe and Asia. While Samsung have managed to impress in many place with the Ultra, the S20 and Plus lines have disappointed many and I can see exactly why. Specs and cost difference simply steer users towards higher end and those who want to save a bit could do much better elsewhere without having to live with the atrocity that is Exynos 990. If Samsung are to stick with their prized development stance, a major review of their architecture will need to be put underway to not only reach performance parity with Qualcomm’s SoC, but also attempt to lead the next generation of phones. Perhaps a generous price cut may attract a new market too, it will be interesting to see how the Korean powerhouse fair in the next few months.
