Ever since mobile phones became smart, the battle for the best smartphone has always seemed to be a two-sided affair. It's mostly Samsung's top-of-the-line Galaxy S series flagships on behalf of the Android side of things versus the latest and greatest iPhone of that particular year, representing Apple's iOS.
Currently, the battle is between the Samsung Galaxy S20 and the iPhone 11 Pro or 11 Pro Max, with the Galaxy S20 being powered by either a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 or Samsung's in-house Exynos 990 chipset based on region, and the iPhone 11 Pro by Apple's most chipset till date, the A13 Bionic.
While the Exynos and Snapdragon versions of the Galaxy S20 give different benchmark results, with the Snapdragon version performing better than the Exynos, but it still cannot beat the benchmark scores of the iPhone 11 Pro. However, that might be about change, come Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S30 later this year.
Galaxy S30 Benchmark results
Samsung's next flagship could finally give the iPhone a run for its money when it comes to performance and match or exceed the might of the upcoming iPhone 12, at least when it comes to graphics.
Based on the first leaked benchmark results of the phone from GizChina, Samsung's rumored 5nm Exynos 1000 SoC which will be powering the Galaxy S30 is up to 3X faster than the Snapdragon 865's GPU.
Thrice as fast
To put things into perspective, the Exynos 1000's AMD GPU managed to score of 58 frames per second (fps) in the GFXBench graphics benchmark, compared to 20 fps for the Snapdragon 865 chip and its Adreno 650 GPU.
The Snapdragon 865-based Galaxy S20 generally gives a score of 20 to 21 frames per second on GFXBench 5.0's Aztec Ruins, OpenGL and Vulkan Benchmarks. In comparison, the iPhone 11 Pro gives 33 to 34 fps in the same test.
Will Apple catch up?
If the leaked benchmark results are anything turn out to be accurate, the upcoming Galaxy Note 20, which is also rumoured to be powered by the AMD GPU, should be able to easily beat the iPhone 11 Pro and its A13 Bionic processor.
However, we cannot say that it will be able to beat the iPhone 12 Pro since we do not know just how fast the next generation A14 Bionic chip, which will also be employing the 5nm manufacturing process will be. So, it'll be interesting to see what Apple comes up with in October.
Samsung weird strategy
Samsung uses a "two different processors for the same phone" strategy for its flagship models where typically the US-bound model features a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and the same model intended for the rest of the world gets an Exynos chip. This strategy has been criticized by fans and experts alike, with many Samsung fans recently filing a petition asking Samsung to stop using the "less powerful" Exynos chipsets in its flagship smartphones and move entirely to Snapdragon.
However, despite the criticism, it is very likely that Samsung will still launch the upcoming Galaxy S30 and Galaxy Note 20 in both a global Exynos and a Snapdragon version for the US.
Snapdragon 875
Meanwhile, Qualcomm is said to be working in its own 5nm based processor for the upcoming Snapdragon 875. With all three companies working on 5nm SoCs, it will be interesting to see how they all stack up against each other, and it's high time the iPhone got some real competition from the Android contenders.
Hopefully, the Galaxy S30 might turn out to be the first Android smartphone to beat the iPhone, or maybe we're just being too optimistic. Either way, it will be a win for the consumer because the competition is always a good thing and it's what drives innovation.
