Quick Comparing of SoCs: Snapdragon, Huawei's Kirin, Samsung's Exynos, and Apple's A-series.

Image Source: Android Authority

So far, there are some chipsets used by smartphone manufacturers in arming their devices. Of the few you may recognize, namely Qualcomm Snapdragon, Kirin from Huawei, Exynos from Samsung and Apple's A Series special for their iPhone. Of 4 chipsets that have shown before, let's look at the short comparison.

Peter, GSMARENA - There are four major manufacturers of flagship chipsets – Qualcomm (Snapdragon), Samsung (Exynos), Huawei (Kirin) and Apple (A-series). Three of those tend to be used in the respective companies' own flagships. Apple certainly doesn’t want to share while Samsung and Huawei rarely find outside customers.

We often talk about the power usage of a chipset – it’s important for the battery budget. Fabbing the chip at lower nanometers helps with that, but also balances the other important sheet. The price of a chip (patent costs aside) is proportional to its size. This makes it tricky to find the right balance between CPU power, graphics performance and additional features (image processors, AI accelerators and so on).

For the curious, Tech Insights has annotated photos of the chipset dies of the four major players. A Snapdragon 845 is 25% smaller than an Exynos 9810. The Apple A11 Bionic is even smaller than the Snapdragon, but is the only one with without a modem on board. The Kirin is somewhere in between.

Here’s a scale image of the four chipsets (click for a closer look):

Image Source: GSMARENA

And here is a table with the sizes (note that the Snapdragon 845 size is estimated):

Chipset & Size

Exynos 9810 = 118.94 mm²

Kirin 970 = 96.72 mm²

Snapdragon 845 = 91 mm²

A11 Bionic* = 87.66 mm²

* not counting the external modem

To see if each company got its money's worth, here is how these chipsets perform in CPU and GPU tasks. (note: an Xperia XZ2 is standing in for the S845-powered Galaxy S9+)

All Image Sources: GSMARENA

Source: GSMARENA