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.
