While mobile devices can get larger and wider, the technology inside them should get smaller.
The reason for the decreasing size of smartphones' internal components is to target efficiency. Smaller chips require less energy to operate, meaning that it will make the devices it powers to last longer in a single charge. And if they manufacturers can retain, and even increase the chips' performance capabilities without having to bulk it up, that is a big win.
Among the many news in this 2020, Apple has stole the spotlight this week with the unveiling of its first-ever in-house silicon for Macs. Calling it the M1, the 'Apple Silicon' is an ARM-powered chip that is only 5-nanometer in size.
Apple isn't the only giant in the smartphone business, as South Korean' conglomerate company Samsung also has its own approach in mobile chips.
And here, Samsung has unveiled the Exynos 1080, a mid-range chip that is also 5-nanometer in size, but also packs with lots of improvements.
The chipset that is the successor to the Exynos 980 is regarded as the world's first platform built on Samsung‘s 5nm technology which the company showcased in 2019.
Among other things, the 5-nanometer tech in Exynox 1080 promises significant improvements in performance and power efficiency, which is something every Android phone should benefit from.
Despite the chipset is considered a mid-range, it packs an octa-core CPU with one high-performance 2.8GHz Cortex-A78, three slightly less powerful Cortex-A78 cores for balanced processing, and four Cortex-A55 for efficiency. The innards also include a Mali-G78 MP10 GPU.
The most notable, is that it comes with support for up to six camera sensors, or 200 megapixels single camera, or dual 32MP + 32MP units and videos that go up to 4K at 60fps.
And with support for true 10-bit recording, the chipset allows devices to record HDR10+ videos.
The chipset also gets the LPDDR4x and LPDDR5 RAM standards as well as UFS 3.1 storage. It can be hooked to WQHD+ displays of up to 90Hz refresh rate, or Full HD+ panels at up to 144Hz refresh rate.
Besides that, the processor is also compatible with both types of 5G networks, mmWave and sub-6GHz, enabling downlink speeds of up to 5.1Gbps on the latter. It also supports both Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6.
Samsung has announced the Exynos 1080 processor in China.
As for the first phones to include this chipset, they would be from Vivo.
The Chinese company that is headquartered in Dongguan has confirmed this.
Samsung also confirmed that Vivo will be using the Exynos 1080 in 2021 for a “flagship experience” to machine translation.
Samsung has been known for its obsession with packing huge sensors with high megapixel counts.
For example, it was the first to have introduced the world's first 100MP camera sensor, and is on its way to create the world's first 600MP camera to rival the human eyes.
For these reasons among others, Samsung is no stranger in introducing and putting big numbers on its devices.