Samsung Exynos 1280 vs Samsung Exynos 850 vs UNISOC SC9863A

Samsung Exynos 1280

The Samsung Exynos 1280 is a midrange system on a chip (SoC) for smartphones and tablets. It was announced in early 2022 and is used in the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G. The CPU part integrates two clusters, a performance cluster with two ARM Cortex-A78 cores clocked at up to 2.4 GHz and an efficiency cluster with six small ARM Cortex-A55 cores at up to 2 GHz. The integrated memory controller supports LPDDR4x.

Furthermore, the chip integrates an ISP for cameras with up to 108 MPixel. The integrated ARM Mali G68 MC4 supports displays with up to 1080p and 120Hz.

One of the main features is the integrated 5G modem that supports Sub-6GHz (2550/1280 Mbps), mmWave (1840/920 Mbps), and LTE Cat 18 (1200/200 Mbps). WiFi 5 is the highest supported standard, as is Bluetooth 5.2.

The SoC is manufactured in the modern 5nm process at Samsung.

Samsung Exynos 850

The Samsung Exynos 850 is a System on a Chip (SoC) for entry level smartphones (Android based). It was announced in May 2020 and the first device with it is the Samsung Galaxy A21s. The chip integrates a processor with 8 small ARM Cortex-A55 cores that clock with up to 2 GHz (octa core).

The multi threaded performance is quite good thanks to 8 cores, the single threaded performance suffers a bit from the small A55 cores, although the clock rate of up to 2 GHz can help a bit.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a LTE modem (Cat.7 2CA up to 300 MBit/s download, Cat.13 2CA 150 MBit/s upload), a Wi-fi 5 modem (802.11ac), LPPDDR4x memory controller, eMMC 5.1 flash memory controller and a video engine for FHD 60fps encoding and decoding (H.265, H.264, VP9).

It is manufactured in the modern 8nm LPP process at Samsung and should offer a good power efficiency and therefore it is also suited for small smartphones.

UNISOC SC9863A

The Unisoc SC9863A (formerly Spreadtrum) is an entry level octa core SoC with 8 ARM Cortex-A55 cores in two clusters. One performance cluster with up to 1.6 GHz and a efficiency cluster with up to 1.2 GHz. The SoC also integrates an LTE modem (TDD-LTE/FDD-LTE/TD-SCDMA/WCDMA/GGE), a PowerVR IMG8322 /GE8322 graphics card and 1080p video support.