Samsung

[Update: Samsung statement] Samsung fans start petition to stop usage of ‘inferior’ Exynos chipsets in Galaxy devices

Damien Wilde | Apr 6 2020 - 1:00 am PT

Samsung fans around the globe have decided to petition the Korean firm to stop using its own Exynos chipsets within their flagship Galaxy devices due to underperformance when compared to their Snapdragon counterparts.

A petition titled “Stop selling us inferior Exynos phones!” on Change.org is steadily gaining traction that demands that Samsung gets rid of the Exynos chipsets in favor of the Qualcomm Snapdragon chips found in North American markets. Not only that, but the petition also suggests switching out Samsung’s own camera sensors in favor of those from Sony.

One complaint that is regularly made with global Exynos devices is poor battery performance when compared to the North American Qualcomm counterparts. While you could easily suggest that this is anecdotal, tests have shown that, in most cases, this is often true — especially in the performance stakes (via Android Authority).

Outside of the US, Samsung sells their phones with their own Exynos chips instead of Qualcomm Snapdragon. They also use Samsung made camera sensors, instead of the Sony ones in the US version. These parts are inferior, and there are numerous comparisons online. The Exynos phones are slower, have worse battery life, worse camera sensors and processing, get hotter and throttle faster, etc. This maybe wouldn’t be so bad if Samsung were transparent about it, or if we were’t paying the exact same price or even higher than our US friends.

We have put up with this issue for years, and every year we have hoped for Samsung to either give us the same device, or make their own parts perform on par with the competition. They have failed to deliver on these requests over and over again and the performance gap only seems to widen. It’s time for a change and us consumers have the right to choose what we spend our hard earned money on!

Samsung, please hear us! We love your devices and want to be treated fairly, so that we can continue to enjoy them.

At the time of publishing, the petition has amassed around 4,200 signatures but does appear to be gaining momentum. At the moment, that low figure isn’t likely enough to catch the attention of Samsung executives but the Exynos chipsets are a common complaint we hear from readers and even some tech journalists when new devices are touted.

[Update 04/06]: While the petition has steadily garnered over 30,000 signatures, it appears that even Samsung has at least acknowledged fans ire with a statement to SamMobile:

The Galaxy S20 is a smartphone that’s been reimagined to change the way you experience the world and depending on the region, the Galaxy S20 will either ship with the Exynos 990 or the Snapdragon 865.

Both the Exynos and Snapdragon processors go through the same strict and rigorous, real-life testing scenarios in order to deliver a consistent and optimal performance over the entire lifecycle of the smartphone.

That isn’t the most convincing argument for the continued usage of the Exynos chipsets that we are seeing in supposed “top-tier” Samsung flagships. It might even enrage some fans that remain vehemently against usage of the Exynos chipset family. However, it’s worth noting that the Korean firm is set to shut its custom chipset division, likely in favor of ARM Cortex CPUs, that definitely indicates that the tech giant is at least frustrated by one subsection of its own manufacturing processes for Exynos chipsets.

To add to that, Samsung confirmed they will be working directly with AMD on new mobile GPUs. This could aide Exynos chipset performance quite substantially, but we will have to wait and see what the duo are able to bring to the table over the coming years.

Would you sign this petition against Samsung? Should the Korean firm have hardware parity between devices in different regions? Let us know down in the comments section below.