Qualcomm had a disappointing year in 2015 when their flagship ended up being a major disaster. Overheating issues plagued devices that used the chipset but the company is back with a bang. Huawei’s Kirin 950 was the only chipset close to Apple A9 processor in terms of performance and you can read all about that here. With the release of Snapdragon 820, things changed and Qualcomm is set to take its place as the best smartphone chipset maker again.
Antutu released the list of top 10 smartphone CPUs with Snapdragon 820 on top of the list with a score of 136383. Apple A9 processor follows closely with 132657 points. It’s surprising that Samsung Exynos 8890 (octa-core processor) trails behind in the third place since it’s used on the company’s 2016 flagship device. Besides, it packs more cores than the Snapdragon 820 (quad-core) and Apple A9 (dual-core).
Adreno 530 is the GPU paired with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and again, it thrashes competitors. It scores 55098 points and again, it’s followed closely by Apple A9 with a score 39104. Mali-T880 MP12 paired with Samsung Exynos 8890 makes the third position with 37545 points.
It’s understandable to see other chipsets and GPUs far behind Apple A9 since they were all manufactured last year. However, the fact that Samsung Exynos 8890 scores lower than Apple A9 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 can’t be ignored. As mentioned earlier, it packs more cores than the first two and again, it is manufactured using the same 14nm processor used in Snapdragon 820.
For now, Qualcomm is back at the top but it’s still a long year ahead. iPhone 7 is on the way and we can’t wait to see how the next Apple A10 processor stands against the best smartphone chipset in the world right now, Snapdragon 820. Another interesting chipset we should be looking out for is Huawei Kirin 960 rumored to be coming with Huawei D8.