Samsung’s new Exynos 850 raises the bar for budget-focused mobile chipsets

The chip is designed for smartphones, tablets, wearables, and IoT devices.

What you need to know

• Samsung has shed more light on the specifications of its new Exynos 850 mobile processor.
• It is the first 8nm mobile processor that is designed for budget phones.
• The first phone to feature the new chip is the Galaxy A21s, which was announced last month.

Samsung introduced a new Galaxy A series phone called the A21s last month, featuring an Exynos 850 chipset under the hood. While Samsung didn't reveal much about the chipset back then, it has now detailed all the key features and specifications of the Exynos 850 on its website (via SamMobile).

The Exynos 850 is manufactured on an 8nm LPP process, which gives it an edge over other recent mobile chipsets that have been designed for affordable smartphones. It uses eight ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores clocked at 2GHz, coupled with an ARM Mali-G52 GPU. Unlike Samsung's flagship Exynos 990 and mid-range Exynos 980 chips, however, the Exynos 850 does not feature an NPU.

While the chipset doesn't support 5G, it does come with an integrated LTE modem that supports Cat.13 download speeds. The chipset supports up to 21.7MP single cameras on both the front and rear, as well as up to 16MP + 5MP dual rear cameras. Weirdly, however, the Galaxy A21s sports a quad-camera array on the back with a 48MP primary sensor. The Exynos 850 also supports up to Full HD 60fps video recording and 1080 x 2520 Full HD+ resolution displays.

The Exynos 850 is expected to show up in more budget Galaxy smartphones later this year. Whether or not other Android OEMs will release phones powered by the 8nm chipset, however, is something that remains to be seen.

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