Samsung announces Exynos 5422 Octa and Exynos 5260 Hexa

It has begun a tradition Samsung to have its flagship smartphone utilize two types of chipsets. The Galaxy S4 was the first to get a Snapdragon and an Exynos version, followed by the Galaxy Note 3. Now the Galaxy S5 is getting a similar treatment as well. The Exynos 5 Octa chipset, even though it didn't become as popular as Samsung probably hoped for, is still quite a capable chipset with flagship performance.

In an attempt to popularize its Exynos SoC, Samsung has recently started to use it for the non-LTE models of its slates (the Galaxy Tab and Note Pro series). We already met with some of those and their performance turned out great.

Today Samsung has introduced the newest revision of the Exynos 5 Octa system-on-chip - the Exynos 5422 Octa. It has four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 2.1GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores @ 1.5GHz. This is a good 200MHz upgrade over the previous Exynos 5420 SoC. The 5422, naturally, uses the big.LITTLE ARM architecture, but comes with Samsung's own tweak - HMP (Heterogeneous Multi Processing) technology. The HMP allows the device to utilize any combination of cores, even all eight, at once.

There is nothing official on the GPU inside the new Exynos Octa revision, but we guess it is the same as the 5420 chip - Mali-T628.

Samsung has also detailed the Exynos 5260 Hexa chipset, we already met on the Galaxy Note 3 Neo. It offers two Cortex-A15 @ 1.7GHz cores and four Cortex-A7 @ 1.3GHz cores. The processor supports big.LITTLE with HMP, so the device can use all six cores simultaneously.

Samsung once again didn't specify the GPU, but we already know from the Note 3 Neo that Mali-T624 is in charge of the graphics department.

Both new platforms support displays up to 2560x1600 pixels resolution. The Exynos 5422 Octa also supports 4K video playback and recording, while the Exynos 5260 Hexa offers Full HD @ 60fps playback/recording.

Exynos 5422 Octa will enter mass production by the end of March, while the Hexa model is already in mass production.

Samsung has also introduced its newest 16MP and 13MP (16:9) ISOCELL CMOS camera sensors. Both offer 1.12µm big ISOCELL pixels and 1080p video recording. The 16MP sensor is capable of 1080p@60fps capturing plus burst mode at 16MP at 60fps and will enter mass production this quarter. The 13MP one supports 13MP burst mode at 30fps and will be available in Q2, 2014.

Samsung Galaxy S5 is probably using the new 16MP ISOCELL sensor, so we can't wait to get our hands on a retail unit to do a thorough test of its camera.

Source | Via