Samsung announces 1.4GHz Exynos 4 Quad processor for ‘next Galaxy smartphone’
Samsung apparently couldn't wait for its big ‘Next Galaxy’ announcement to give us the detail on the chip that will power it. Dubbed the “Exynos 4 Quad,” the chip will run at 1.4GHz per core and is based on the ARM Cortex A9.
Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung is pre-announcing the brain of its 'Next Galaxy' phone six business days before the confirmed May 3rd London unveiling, a deliberate leak-by-press-release under what reports describe as its tightest-ever secrecy lockdown around the Galaxy S II successor. The pick is notable on its own terms: rather than jumping to the 2GHz Cortex-A15-based Exynos 5250 Samsung unveiled in November 2011, the flagship goes with four ARM Cortex-A9 cores at 1.4GHz — a proven-core, volume-manufacturable choice over the bleeding-edge one.
The announcement traveled unusually far for a component spec sheet: TechCrunch, CNET, Engadget, AnandTech, AppleInsider and 9to5Google all picked it up within a day, reflecting how much weight the market puts on Samsung's silicon roadmap ahead of its biggest phone launch of 2012 — and how closely Apple watchers track it given the two companies' litigation across nine countries.
First-order effects
- The May 3rd Galaxy S II successor now has its headline spec fixed publicly before the curtain rises, shifting the London event's job from surprise to confirmation and setting the benchmark expectations reviewers will test against.
- Samsung ships its biggest phone of 2012 on in-house silicon, keeping the Exynos 4 Quad supply, margins and tuning under its own control rather than sourcing a Qualcomm Snapdragon or NVIDIA Tegra part.
Second-order effects
- Android rivals that buy their chips — HTC, Motorola and LG among them — face a competitor whose vertical integration lets it match or beat their flagship specs while capturing the component margin they pay away to merchant vendors.
- Qualcomm and NVIDIA lose their highest-visibility showcase slot of the spring: the most anticipated Android launch of 2012 no longer validates a third-party SoC, raising the bar for Snapdragon S4 and Tegra 3 design wins elsewhere.
Third-order effects
- Flagship phone competition shifts another step from displays and radios toward who designs the system-on-chip, rewarding OEMs with their own ARM licensees and squeezing those dependent on merchant silicon.
- Samsung's two-track core strategy — shipping Cortex-A9 in phones while its Cortex-A15 Exynos 5250 matures — points toward a tiered in-house roadmap that treats each Galaxy generation as a guaranteed socket for Samsung's own chips.
The trend: Smartphone differentiation is migrating into in-house system-on-chip roadmaps, with Samsung timing each Exynos reveal to its Galaxy launch cycle and leaving chip buyers to compete for whatever sockets Samsung doesn't reserve for itself.