This Samsung-made processor may be even better than the Snapdragon 888

What you need to know

• Samsung's semiconductor business may finally be able to redeem itself with the launch of the new Exynos 2100 SoC.
• The Korean giant's in-house chip is reportedly even able to beat Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 888.
• The chip can apparently achieve a 3,963 score for multi-core performance on Geekbench, compared to the 3,794 Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 888 is capable of.

It's been a tough few years for Samsung's chip-making business. After years of producing in-house designs for SoCs that simply could not keep up with its Qualcomm-made competition, Samsung's LSI division reached a new low this year when the smartphone division snubbed its Exynos 990 chip in favor of Qualcomm's wares even in the South Korean versions of the Galaxy S20.

The division reportedly 'felt humiliated' as a result of the debacle, not to mention the public backlash from consumers asking Samsung to get rid of its Exynos chips entirely.

Thankfully, that's all about to change with the company's newest in-house SoC, the Exynos 2100. The result of a partnership with ARM via its Cortex-X program, the Exynos 2100's CPU can now more than keep up with Qualcomm's latest and greatest and should afford the next generation of Samsung flagships the distinction of truly being the best Android phones out there — regardless of where you buy them from.

According to prolific Samsung tipster @UniverseIce, the new SoC from Samsung is capable of achieving a 1,089 single-core score and a 3,963 multi-core score on Geekbench. The latter of those is particularly significant because it's better than the 3,794 Qualcomm says its upcoming Snapdragon 888 is capable of achieving.

Of course, synthetic benchmarks are one thing, but what really matters is real-world performance. Thankfully, we won't have long before we can put both chips through their paces with the first Snapdragon 888 phone launching later this month on December 28, while Samsung's Galaxy S21 is expected to launch on January 14.

As always, the Galaxy S21 series will sport either the Exynos 2100 or the Snapdragon 888 depending on which country you're in; the U.S., for example, will get the Snapdragon 888 variant.