For a smartphone that is scheduled to launch in February almost 8 months away at this point, we know quite a lot about the Galaxy S23 Ultra. One of them is the gigantic 200MP camera sensor. We also know some interesting rumors about its chipset which I'll come back to in a moment but first, let's take a look at what this 200MP camera sensor on the S23 Ultra is capable of.
Samsung has uploaded a video where they are taking this sensor for a test run capturing the image of a cat and then printing a gigantic, 616-square-meter canvas of a cat’s face, all to show the level of detail it can bring out. Just to be clear, this is the 200MP ISOCELL HP 1 sensor, Samsung will use an upgraded version of this sensor for the S23 Ultra. And the results here look impressive. Sure just because you can doesn't mean you should. I mean no one's going to go out and print a gigantic poster with their S23 Ultra but the point is the sensor can take such detailed images and if Samsung plays their cards right with the post-processing, the S23 Ultra can once again be the smartphone camera to beat in 2023.
With that said, there are conflicting reports about the Exynos 2300. Some say Samsung is skipping the Exynos line for 2 years and will go with Snapdragon entirely. Some others say citing the internal codenames of the Exynos 2300 that the S23 will again come in two chipset variants. Nobody apart from Samsung knows this for sure and I'll keep you posted when I hear some concrete evidence about it but if Samsung indeed goes ahead with the Exynos 2300 then they have a great chance to close the gap between its Snapdragon counterpart and even with Apple's A-series bionic chipset. Let me explain why. You see we just got information from famous Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that Apple will stick to the 5nm process for the A16 Bionic chip on the iPhone 14 lineup including the pro.
TSMC is making these chipsets for Apple and TSMC said the 3nm chipsets will take another year to go into mass production because the yield rate is very low. If you don't know Yield is basically the percentage of non-defective items of all produced items. So the fact that the A16 will still be produced on the same 5nm nodes as the A15 means the performance and battery improvements are going to be very minimal. Now since Qualcomm has also decided to switch to TSMC for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, it would also mean that the next Snapdragon chip won't use the 3nm process either. It will still be 4nm just like the current 8 Gen 1.
By the way, Ming Chie Kuo says 4nm is just a marketing term, it's basically a 5nm process. But despite that, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 appears to be performing really well in initial tests according to Ice Universe. Now the Exynos 2300 on the other hand will likely use the 3nm process because Samsung foundry has confirmed that it is on track to start high-volume production using its 3nm fabrication process in this quarter itself. Not only that it's the world's first process to use GAA transistors. Without going into the technical terms, GAA is better chip-making technology than the current FinFET process. Samsung says it will reduce the overall power consumption by 50%, improve the performance by 30%, and reduce the chip size by 45% compared to the same 7nm FinFET process. So coupled with the gains 3nm nodes will bring to the table, the Exynos 2300 has a great chance to close the gap with its Snapdragon counterpart. But how much? We'll have to wait and see.
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