With time passing by, the budget smartphone market is getting more and more competitive. In the mid-range segment, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 is leading the game but Samsung has decided to use its own Exynos 7904 chipset for the new Galaxy A-series smartphones.
So, let’s find out how Snapdragon 660 and Exynos 7904 are different from each other and which among the two is better. First, let’s have a quick look at the comparison of their specifications.
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Performance
Both the chipsets are manufactured using the 14nm LPP FinFET process, which is a smaller process node to achieve power efficiency along with performance boost. Many chipset makers are now going for smaller process nodes and the flagship chipsets have now reached the 7nm process node.
The Snapdragon 660 SoC comes with a combination performance and efficiency cores — four semi-custom Cortex-A73 performance cores clocked at 2.2GHz and the other four are semi-custom Cortex-A53 efficiency cores clocked at 1.7GHz. As for the GPU, it comes with the mid-range Adreno 512 GPU that supports graphics APIs such as Vulkan 1.0 and OpenGL ES.
On the other hand, the Exynos 7804 comes with a 2 + 6 cores configuration, consisting of two Cortex-A73 performance cores clocked at 1.8GHz and six Cortex-A53 efficiency cores clocked at 1.6GHz. It packs 16nm-based Mali-G71 MP2 GPU which also supports Vulkan 1.0 and OpenGL ES.
While both perform good, based on the AnTuTu and GeekBench scores, the Snapdragon 660 SoC has an edge over the Exynos 7904 when it comes to performance. However, note that the performance could vary depending on various factors.
Camera & Display
In the camera department, Samsung’s Exynos 7904 takes the lead as it supports a single camera setup of 32 MP and a dual camera setup of 16 MP + 16 MP. The company says that the chipset can also support triple-camera setup.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 660, on the other hand, supports up to 25 MP sensor in the single-camera setup and 16 MP + 16 MP sensors when it comes to dual camera setup. It comes with Qualcomm Spectra 160 ISP and Qualcomm Clear Sight.
Coming to the display support, the Samsung Exynos 7904 supports Full HD and Full HD+ Display up to 20:9 aspect ratio and can play Full HD videos at 130fps and UHD videos at 30fps. On the other hand, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 supports Quad HD (2560×1600 pixels) display and has the ability to support 4K external displays.
Connectivity & Charging
In terms of connectivity, both the processors are almost the same, except for the support for Bluetooth. Both support LTE Cat.12 for uplink and LTE Cat.13 standards for downlink. So, on paper, speeds offers by both these processors would be the same. However, the Snapdragon 660 comes with support for Bluetooth 5.0, the Exynos 7904 supports Bluetooth 4.2.
Coming to the charging department, the Snapdragon 660 is bundled with the company’s Quick Charge 4.0 fast charging technology which promises faster charging and higher battery efficiency. If you are low on battery life, charging if for a few minutes will provide battery power for usage of a couple of hours.
On the other hand, Samsung is tight-lipped about the technology that it uses for fast charging feature. However, from the specs sheet, it seems that the Exynos 7904 indeed supports fast charging technology, but we don’t know how it works.
Bottom Line
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 and Samsung Exynos 7904 are both good mid-range processor and are very similar. However, the Snapdragon 660 does have an edge over the Exynos 7904 with its custom Kryo cores, better GPU and Quick Charge 4 fast charging support.
