Samsung Exynos 850 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G 5G vs UNISOC SC9863A

Samsung Exynos 850

The Samsung Exynos 850 is a System on a Chip (SoC) for entry level smartphones (Android based). It was announced in May 2020 and the first device with it is the Samsung Galaxy A21s. The chip integrates a processor with 8 small ARM Cortex-A55 cores that clock with up to 2 GHz (octa core).

The multi threaded performance is quite good thanks to 8 cores, the single threaded performance suffers a bit from the small A55 cores, although the clock rate of up to 2 GHz can help a bit.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a LTE modem (Cat.7 2CA up to 300 MBit/s download, Cat.13 2CA 150 MBit/s upload), a Wi-fi 5 modem (802.11ac), LPPDDR4x memory controller, eMMC 5.1 flash memory controller and a video engine for FHD 60fps encoding and decoding (H.265, H.264, VP9).

It is manufactured in the modern 8nm LPP process at Samsung and should offer a good power efficiency and therefore it is also suited for small smartphones.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G 5G

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 780G 5G (SM7350-AB Mobile Platform) is a fast mid-range ARM-based SoC largely found on Android tablets and smartphones. It integrates eight cores (octa-core) divided into three clusters. A fast prime core for single thread performance based on the ARM Cortex-A78 architecture with up to 2.4 GHz. Three additional A78 based performance cores with up to 2.2 GHz and a power efficiency cluster with four small ARM Cortex-A55 cores at up to 1.9 GHz. Depending on the workload only single clusters or all cores can run at different clock speeds.

Thanks to the new Cortex-A78 cores, the CPU performance increases by up to 40% compared to the old Snapdragon 768G according to Qualcomm. In our benchmarks, the 780G is able to reach the performance of the old high end chip Kirin 990. The multi-thread performance is similar to the old Snapdragon 865+ in the Galaxy Z Fold2, but using a single core, the 780G is trailing behind.

The integrated X53 5G modem supports up to 3.3 Gbps with sub 6Ghz. The FastConnect 6900 Wi-Fi modem supports the current Wi-Fi 6e standard with 6GHz.

The integrated Qualcomm Adreno 642 offers a 50% higher performance compared to the old Adreno 620 in the predecessor. This is partly thanks to the fast memory controller with LPDDR4X-4200 support.

The integrated 6th gen AI engine called Hexagon 770 offers a 2x improvement and up to 12 TOPS of performance. The Spectra 570 ISP (image signal processor) supports up to three cameras. The satellite system supports all major standards like Beidou, Galileo, GLONASS and GPS.

The G specifies an optimized SoC for gaming and e.g. Qualcomm offers updates for the graphics driver.

The Snapdragon 780G is manufactured in the modern 5 nm process at Samsung (5LPE with EUV).

UNISOC SC9863A

The Unisoc SC9863A (formerly Spreadtrum) is an entry level octa core SoC with 8 ARM Cortex-A55 cores in two clusters. One performance cluster with up to 1.6 GHz and a efficiency cluster with up to 1.2 GHz. The SoC also integrates an LTE modem (TDD-LTE/FDD-LTE/TD-SCDMA/WCDMA/GGE), a PowerVR IMG8322 /GE8322 graphics card and 1080p video support.