Exy-no-show - Samsung no-showed on its major Exynos 2200 launch

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Samsung was supposed to have a big SoC launch today, but that launch did not happen. Samsung didn't cancel or delay the event. The January 11 date was announced but when the time for the event came, nothing happened! Samsung pulled a no-call no-show for a major product launch.

 

Quotes

Quote

At around 2 pm on January 12 (South Korea time) Samsung finally made a comment. The company told Business Korea "We are planning to unveil the new application processor at the time of launching a new Samsung smartphone." Samsung did not say which Samsung smartphone would include the unveiling of the Exynos 2200, but everyone assumes that's the Galaxy S22. Samsung also did not address why it canceled its Exynos event and didn't tell anyone. The spokesperson added, "There are no problems with the AP’s production and performance.”

After nailing the news of the event cancellation, Ice Universe added on Sina Weibo that the AMD GPU is having problems specifically heat problems. The target frequency is apparently 1.9 GHz, but the companies are currently only seeing reasonable thermals at 1.29 GHz. This is resulting in lots of infighting at Samsung about who dropped the ball. Assuming the S22 event still happens on February 8, we'll keep an eye out for any Exynos news.

 

My thoughts

So, uhh. This article was updated in the midst of me writing on it. Yea, there were a lot of speculation as to why they decided to postpone the launch of this supposedly HUGE moment in Samsung's Exynos' History. The latest one as of the moment is that the RDNA2 GPU is overheating and cannot achieve the targeted core clocks at reasonable temps... tbh, That was what Exynos has been for quite a while. Hopefully the manage to figure this out and get it up and ready before the new date of February the 8th.

 

Sources

ArsTechnica

BusinessKorea

IceUniverse

[Quackers101]

they should just have the backside as an CPU heat spreader with a fan on the outside. closer air cooling but will fail jerryrigeverything.

price be damned, cool my phone dammit! *puts it in water*

[CephDigital]

Was looking forward to this as well
Might have made a good upgrade from my LG V50.

[LAwLz]

I saw that some people were speculating that the Exynos 2200 has major issues, and that Samsung will go with the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 for all regions.

Not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, it would be good if Samsung consolidated their development efforts into a single variant. On the other hand, the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 is kind of crap... So it's not exactly the best time for them to move to SD-only.

 

It will be interesting to see what Samsung does. The Galaxy S22 will be my next phone so I really hope they don't screw it up.

[Doobeedoo]

Hmm, I do wonder what actually the problem is, is it rushed as in not enough dev time due to many reasons. Though in general they need to really make a great cooling solution.

I've yet to get a new phone, I'm still on regular S6 and we'll see what this brings and few other that will reveal in next months.

[Exty]

im here im here

[leadeater]

Damn scalpers, taking all the products and now taking all the announcements. Where will they stop?!

[leadeater]

53 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Hmm, I do wonder what actually the problem is, is it rushed as in not enough dev time due to many reasons.

Personally I figure if it got to the point of an official product announcement date being published then it was near as much finalized and a sure thing. A road map and missing a target is one thing but you'd have to be pretty dumb to setup a major product announcement without knowing it's ready.

[Salv8 (sam)]

everyone is thinking it's overheating but like, they could temporally slap a heatsink to it while recording on screen footage of the RDNA2 GPU i don't think thats the issue.

i think whats happened is that they ran into a issue so big that they had to cancel the showcase since they couldn't get it fixed in time and didn't want to show it broken during it's unveiling.

if apple showed the m1 in it's beta stages where it can't do something or crashes often, i don't think people would of bought any m1 devices since it's first unveiling show it being broken.

[Doobeedoo]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

Personally I figure if it got to the point of an official product announcement date being published then it was near as much finalized and a sure thing. A road map and missing a target is one thing but you'd have to be pretty dumb to setup a major product announcement without knowing it's ready.

Right, then the said overheating, you'd really wonder how much power it's using over existing chips. We've seen even the hottest chips mostly under control with best cooling solutions in phones.

[PCGuy_5960]

13 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I saw that some people were speculating that the Exynos 2200 has major issues, and that Samsung will go with the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 for all regions.

Not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, it would be good if Samsung consolidated their development efforts into a single variant. On the other hand, the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 is kind of crap... So it's not exactly the best time for them to move to SD-only.

Maybe it's not the best time, but they really should eventually choose to either go exynos or snapdragon only. More often than not, the 2 variants have a relatively big difference in performance and battery life which makes shopping for a high end samsung phone too complicated. Granted, this difference was minimized with the S21, but that's the exception rather than the rule. 

10 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Right, then the said overheating, you'd really wonder how much power it's using over existing chips. 

My biggest concern if that were the case would be battery life, especially considering that the S22 lineup will be up against the iPhone 13s which have some of the best battery lives on the market.

[LAwLz]

17 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Maybe it's not the best time, but they really should eventually choose to either go exynos or snapdragon only. More often than not, the 2 variants have a relatively big difference in performance and battery life which makes shopping for a high end samsung phone too complicated. Granted, this difference was minimized with the S21, but that's the exception rather than the rule. 

But the thing is... Is it really that complicated?

Like 99% of their customers will not even know that there are two variants of the S21 (or whichever phone we're talking about). My mom certainly don't know that her S9 is a different variant than the S9 sold in the US for example.

And if you are interested in phone hardware it isn't really that hard to keep track of. It seems like a extremely minor issue that only affects people that are interested enough in the hardware to know that there is an Exynos and a Snapdragon version, but they are not interested enough to just look up which one is sold in their country and what the differences are.

 

I also think the disparity between the two are very overblown. 

 

 

Someone on Reddit posted this article regarding the Exynos 2200:

Quote

"We are planning to unveil the new application processor at the time of launching a new Samsung smartphone," a Samsung Electronics official said. “There are no problems with the AP’s production and performance.”

 

Not sure I believe them but we will see.

My current Galaxy S10 is literally falling apart so I will get the S22 regardless. It should be an upgrade in any case. 

[PCGuy_5960]

15 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Like 99% of their customers will not even know that there are two variants of the S21 (or whichever phone we're talking about). My mom certainly don't know that her S9 is a different variant than the S9 sold in the US for example.

Which is precisely the problem. The average customer will just watch one or two reviews which are typically from the US and just go to a store and buy one not knowing that the phone they are buying may not actually be the exact same as the one the reviewer has.

17 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

And if you are interested in phone hardware it isn't really that hard to keep track of. It seems like a extremely minor issue that only affects people that are interested enough in the hardware to know that there is an Exynos and a Snapdragon version, but they are not interested enough to just look up which one is sold in their country and what the differences are.

I disagree that it doesn't affect most people. Yes, the performance difference is probably not going to be noticed unless you are running benchmarks, but things like overheating and battery life are very much noticeable by the average user. Iirc, the exynos version of the S20 and the S10 had 1-2 hours less screen on time compared to the snapdragon version, which is quite significant and is going to make a difference even to the average user who has no idea what an exynos is. 

 

If you are spending $1k for a phone, you should know exactly what you are getting, even if you are not very tech savvy. An iPhone from the US is no different than an iPhone from Europe, the same should hold true for samsung phones.

[Rauten]

5 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Which is precisely the problem. The average customer will just watch one or two reviews which are typically from the US and just go to a store and buy one not knowing that the phone they are buying may not actually be the exact same as the one the reviewer has.

And the average user will also not notice the difference.

5 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

I disagree that it doesn't affect most people. Yes, the performance difference is probably not going to be noticed unless you are running benchmarks, but things like overheating and battery life are very much noticeable by the average user. Iirc, the exynos version of the S20 and the S10 had 1-2 hours less screen on time compared to the snapdragon version, which is quite significant and is going to make a difference even to the average user who has no idea what an exynos is.

They won't notice. "Normal" people don't go around worrying about how long the screen has been turned on or off.
Their mind is more "boolean": Is charging my phone a hassle/bother? Y/N

5 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

If you are spending $1k for a phone, you should know exactly what you are getting, even if you are not very tech savvy. An iPhone from the US is no different than an iPhone from Europe, the same should hold true for samsung phones.

They should. They don't. They don't give a crap, they don't care. Do you honestly think that the majority of iPhone buyers give a rat's ass about the chip that's running in it? They don't. They care that it's tHe lAteSt iPhonE  and that's it.

Hell, even in my job (IT Department for a relatively large company) there are people that buy the latest iPhone because it's the latest iPhone and they simply MUST have it  and they're tech-savvy people.

Non-tech savvy don't give 2 craps about ANY of this.

[PCGuy_5960]

1 minute ago, Rauten said:

They won't notice. "Normal" people don't go around worrying about how long the screen has been turned on or off.
Their mind is more "boolean": Is charging my phone a hassle/bother? Y/N

Yep, which is why 1-2 hours worse screen on time is not a minor issue. If you watch a review which claims that this phone lasts all day with heavy use and you get one that doesn't, you'd feel a little cheated. And as the phone ages, the difference will get worse and worse to the point where charging the phone will become a hassle.

5 minutes ago, Rauten said:

They should. They don't. They don't give a crap, they don't care. Do you honestly think that the majority of iPhone buyers give a rat's ass about the chip that's running in it? They don't. They care that it's tHe lAteSt iPhonE  and that's it.

That's kind of my point. People should just be able to walk into a store and buy tHe lAtEsT samsung, no strings attached. Right now, only half of the world can buy the latest samsung, the others get the latest samsung but slightly worse in every way.

[Rauten]

1 minute ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Yep, which is why 1-2 hours worse screen on time is not a minor issue. If you watch a review which claims that this phone lasts all day with heavy use and you get one that doesn't, you'd feel a little cheated. And as the phone ages, the difference will get worse and worse to the point where charging the phone will become a hassle.

But normal people don't do heavy use. They watch a couple youtube videos, MAYBE. Do some whatsapping, bit of e-mailing, some web browsing...

Normal people's phone usage is actually usually relatively light, waaaaaayyyy under-utilising what these phones can truly do.

The difference in battery longevity will only truly be felt by power-users, and those probably do their research but are also in the minority.

1 minute ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

That's kind of my point. People should just be able to walk into a store and buy tHe lAtEsT samsung, no strings attached. Right now, only half of the world can buy the latest samsung, the others get the latest samsung but slightly worse in every way.

And I agree, they should. But since only a very small minority cares, it just doesn't happen, and won't happen anytime soon.

[PCGuy_5960]

8 minutes ago, Rauten said:

But normal people don't do heavy use. They watch a couple youtube videos, MAYBE. Do some whatsapping, bit of e-mailing, some web browsing...

Normal people's phone usage is actually usually relatively light, waaaaaayyyy under-utilising what these phones can truly do.

The difference in battery longevity will only truly be felt by power-users, and those probably do their research but are also in the minority.

You'd be surprised. Browsing tiktok or something on 5G and playing some light mobile games can actually drain the battery quite quickly. 

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

You'd be surprised. Browsing tiktok or something on 5G and playing some light mobile games can actually drain the battery quite quickly. 

I still play PoGo... lol

 

That game eats battery which is why I play it with a 10,000 mAh battery pack, S10e (SM-G970F)

[LAwLz]

42 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Perception.

Would you be happy to know that your $1000 phone is worse then it could be because Samsung used a Exynos instead of a snapdragon in your local market?

Well I mean, I got the Exynos 9820 Galaxy S10 knowing full well what I was getting, and that was arguably the point in time where Exynos was the farthest behind the SD.

So I guess my answer to that question would be yes. I am okay with it. I am not exactly cheering with joy over it, but I can understand the reason behind it and don't mind it that much.

I feel like a lot of complaining are from people who don't actually care about the devices themselves but rather just want to feel special for having "the best", regardless of how good "the best" or "second best" is.

 

34 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Which is precisely the problem. The average customer will just watch one or two reviews which are typically from the US and just go to a store and buy one not knowing that the phone they are buying may not actually be the exact same as the one the reviewer has.

I don't think the average consumer even watches reviews at all. But even if they did, does it really matter? The difference is very small to begin with, and there has been plenty of times when the Exynos model was the superior one as well. 

 

36 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Iirc, the exynos version of the S20 and the S10 had 1-2 hours less screen on time compared to the snapdragon version

[Citation Needed]

In the tests I saw the difference was negligible. 11.33 hours vs 10.93 hours during Anandtech's WiFi battery test for example. Or 10.02 hours vs 9.35 hours in the PCMark Work battery life test.

So we're talking like 5% less battery life when running things on the devices. The Exynos model also had lower standby power so in real world scenarios the difference would probably be like 1-2%.

[PCGuy_5960]

4 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I don't think the average consumer even watches reviews at all. But even if they did, does it really matter? The difference is very small to begin with, and there has been plenty of times when the Exynos model was the superior one as well. 

I'm not complaining about exynos. I just want consistency. It just makes no sense to me that two people can spend the same amount of money and buy the same phone and get a different experience because one lives in the US and the other in Europe.

8 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

[Citation Needed]

In the tests I saw the difference was negligible. 11.33 hours vs 10.93 hours during Anandtech's WiFi battery test for example. Or 10.02 hours vs 9.35 hours in the PCMark Work battery life test.

So we're talking like 5% less battery life when running things on the devices. The Exynos model also had lower standby power so in real world scenarios the difference would probably be like 1-2%.

The 1-2 hours worse SoT for the exynos was quite common in "real world" tests done on YouTube as far as I remember, since real world use is what we are talking about.

Spoiler

 

 

[LAwLz]

44 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

If you are spending $1k for a phone, you should know exactly what you are getting, even if you are not very tech savvy. An iPhone from the US is no different than an iPhone from Europe, the same should hold true for samsung phones.

There are small variations in iPhones too. Sometimes they dual source stuff like the screen, flash and at one point even the SoC. They use slightly different modems in various phones, and so on. The European model of the iPhone 13 for example do not support mmWave, but the US one does.

[RejZoR]

58 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Which is precisely the problem. The average customer will just watch one or two reviews which are typically from the US and just go to a store and buy one not knowing that the phone they are buying may not actually be the exact same as the one the reviewer has.

I disagree that it doesn't affect most people. Yes, the performance difference is probably not going to be noticed unless you are running benchmarks, but things like overheating and battery life are very much noticeable by the average user. Iirc, the exynos version of the S20 and the S10 had 1-2 hours less screen on time compared to the snapdragon version, which is quite significant and is going to make a difference even to the average user who has no idea what an exynos is. 

 

If you are spending $1k for a phone, you should know exactly what you are getting, even if you are not very tech savvy. An iPhone from the US is no different than an iPhone from Europe, the same should hold true for samsung phones.

Average consumers don't even read reviews. For the most part they don't even know what phone model exactly they have if oyu ask them 6 months after purchase. It was shitty move back when Exynos was inferior to Snapdragon, with Exynos 2100 and newer, it seems they'll be pretty similar if not Exynos even better in some regards. It just sucks they don't give users a choice. If you're in Europe, it's Exynos whether you like it or not. And you can't just import them from USA because of stupid different data bands.

[PCGuy_5960]

7 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

There are small variations in iPhones too. Sometimes they dual source stuff like the screen, flash and at one point even the SoC. They use slightly different modems in various phones, and so on. The European model of the iPhone 13 for example do not support mmWave, but the US one does.

I remember that Apple got a decent amount of shit for the SoC differences in the 6s and I don't think they ever did that again. The difference in modems has to do with the different data bands in different regions, no? Everyone does that I think.

6 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Average consumers don't even read reviews. For the most part they don't even know what phone model exactly they have if oyu ask them 6 months after purchase. It was shitty move back when Exynos was inferior to Snapdragon, with Exynos 2100 and newer, it seems they'll be pretty similar if not Exynos even better in some regards. It just sucks they don't give users a choice. If you're in Europe, it's Exynos whether you like it or not. And you can't just import them from USA because of stupid different data bands.

If exynos is better it's still a problem though. It's just that Americans will be getting the short end of the stick instead of Europeans. I agree that with the S21 it's no big deal because they are about the same in every way, but this is basically the only time this has ever happened. 

[LAwLz]

49 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Yep, which is why 1-2 hours worse screen on time is not a minor issue. If you watch a review which claims that this phone lasts all day with heavy use and you get one that doesn't, you'd feel a little cheated.

Do people actually take claims like "all day battery life" from some Youtuber or whatever seriously?
Battery life is extremely dependant on your specific use case. Two people with the exact same phone will get wildly different battery lives. What some reviewer says they get on a typical day is completely meaningless. It's like a car reviewer saying "this car is fast because it takes me from my home to work in 10 minutes". You can't buy the same car expecting your trip from home to work to take 10 minutes as well just because it did for someone else. 

 

52 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Right now, only half of the world can buy the latest samsung, the others get the latest samsung but slightly worse in every way.

It's not "slightly worse in every way". Way to overdramatize the whole thing. If we look at the S21 we see that the Exynos 2100 model and the Snapdragon 888 models are:

Within margin of error in terms of CPU performance overall. If I had to give the crown to someone it would actually be the Exynos model since that pulls ahead and with a marger margin in more tests than the Snapdragon 888.

The Exynos is lagging behind quite a bit in GPU performance. Like 10-15% or more.

The Exynos version is slightly behind in terms of power consumption (around 5% in tests with no idle time),

The Exynos has a slightly better tuned dynamic refresh rate (might have changed since launch).

The Exynos model takes slightly better pictures (might have changed since launch).

 

The rest of the phones are the same, like speakers and so on.

 

 

26 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

I'm not complaining about exynos. I just want consistency. It just makes no sense to me that two people can spend the same amount of money and buy the same phone and get a different experience because one lives in the US and the other in Europe.

That's how it is. The same is true for iPhones.

 

 

26 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

Haven't watched the second video but the first one shows a ~8% difference in SoT.

If we look at the test as a whole (so mixed workload) then the difference is 3% worse battery life on the Exynos version. It's basically a rounding error. You're gonna want to charge your phone once a day regardless. It makes no difference in the real world.

Again, the entire thing is way overblown. 

[PCGuy_5960]

17 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

It's not "slightly worse in every way". Way to overdramatize the whole thing. If we look at the S21 we see that the Exynos 2100 model and the Snapdragon 888 models are:

Within margin of error in terms of CPU performance overall. If I had to give the crown to someone it would actually be the Exynos model since that pulls ahead and with a marger margin in more tests than the Snapdragon 888.

The Exynos is lagging behind quite a bit in GPU performance. Like 10-15% or more.

The Exynos version is slightly behind in terms of power consumption (around 5% in tests with no idle time),

The Exynos has a slightly better tuned dynamic refresh rate (might have changed since launch).

The Exynos model takes slightly better pictures (might have changed since launch).

 

The rest of the phones are the same, like speakers and so on.

This is only true for the S21. Historically the difference between exynos and snapdragon has been more significant.

20 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

That's how it is. The same is true for iPhones.

It's really not though. Samsung is the only major phone manufacturer that has different SoCs for different regions in their high end models. A different modem for the different bands used in different regions doesn't make any meaningful difference to anyone, a different SoC does.

23 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Haven't watched the second video but the first one shows a ~8% difference in SoT.

If we look at the test as a whole (so mixed workload) then the difference is 3% worse battery life on the Exynos version. It's basically a rounding error. You're gonna want to charge your phone once a day regardless. It makes no difference in the real world.

I think when it comes to battery life absolute values are more important than percentages. Battery capacity is not a constant, power draw is. The more efficient chip will have significantly better battery life a year or two down the line if the difference is already at 8% for two brand new devices.