Next year, we are going to see a real competition in the world of mobile processing units, it seems, as both the next Exynos and Snapdragon 865 chipset lines will be done at Samsung’s second-gen 7nm production facilities. Currently, Snapdragon 855 that is in the Galaxy S10 for the US is done at the first-gen 7nm production node, while Exynos 9820 for the global versions is on 8nm.
What we were wondering most about, however, is whether Qualcomm and Samsung’s venerable 5G modems will be soldered together with their processors, in a true system-on-a-chip fashion, or will they be separate entities like this year. The need for two separate components to tack on Snapdragon 855 forced many a phone maker to do “5G” versions of their flagships, often with bulkier bodies and larger batteries, and we hope that this tendency won’t stick around next year as well.
The last thing we heard about Snapdragon 865 is that it will have two versions, with and without 5G connectivity, just like this year, but what wasn’t clear was whether the 5G variant will have the modem integrated in a chipset fashion. Well, the latest tip from Roland Quandt doesn’t really clear that up, either, as he confirms the two models codenames Kona and Hurracan, but says “one likely with, one without integrated 5G modem (SDX55)” is in store which is the same speculation we’ve heard before.
What we do learn as a new bit of info, however, is that both will come with support for the latest DDR5 mobile memory generation, and the fastest UFS 3.0 storage standard that the OnePlus 7 Pro shipped with. Samsung already announced it is mass production-ready for LPDDR5 memory chips but we wouldn’t hold our breath to see those in phones before next spring and the Galaxy S11 season.
Samsung recently tipped that it is planning to integrate a 5G modem into a chipset (presumably of its own Exynos making) faster than anyone, and we’d expect to hear about it before the end of the year, with the inevitable end goal to see it make a cameo in the S11 alongside the Snapdragon 865.