Samsung introduces 14nm octacore for midrange smartphones

Samsung has presented an octacore processor at 14nm for midrange smartphones. The Exynos 7870 has eight Cortex A53 cores at 1.6GHz and looks set to compete with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 series.

That it is a soc for midrange smartphones is apparent not only from the processor cores used, but also from the maximum supported resolution, namely full-hd. In the field of 4g, the soc has support for lte cat 6, up to 300Mbit/s down. The eight processor cores are supported by the Mali T830 GPU from ARM.

Samsung specifically mentions that the soc supports two cameras at the same time, a function that seems to become more important in the smartphone market in the coming year. The Huawei P9, LG G5 and iPhone 7, among others, would use dual cameras. LG already presented a midrange device with a dual camera this week.

The Exynos 7870 seems to be a competitor to the recently presented Qualcomm Snapdragon 625, which is also made at 14nm. Samsung will take the Exynos 7870 into mass production before the end of March, which makes it obvious that a smartphone with this soc will be available around the summer.