It's that time of the year when we keep our eyes peeled for information about the new components that will be used for the next iteration of Samsung devices. As we await the high-end Exynos chipset that will be used for the Galaxy S21, there's also excitement for a new mid-range processor.
Samsung offers some great mid-range smartphones as part of its Galaxy A series. The upcoming lineup will require a new chipset and perhaps it might be called the Exynos 981. This unannounced processor has been spotted on the Bluetooth SIG but little is known about it right now.
Exynos 981 could be used in Samsung's new affordable 5G phones
We already know that Samsung has a new mid-range chipset in the pipeline. It's called the Exynos 1080 and Samsung has confirmed that it will use ARM's latest Cortex-A78 CPU cores. Many believe that this will be the successor to the Exynos 980.
The Exynos 980 was not used for the Galaxy A51. It was announced long after this device hit the market. It uses the Exynos 9611. Samsung only went with the Exynos 980 for the separate 5G variants of the Galaxy A51 and Galaxy A71.
So where does that leave the Exynos 981? If it is indeed the successor to the Exynos 980, then it may be used for 5G variants of the Galaxy A52 and Galaxy A72. Samsung has also sold the Exynos 980 to other OEMs like Vivo so it may do that with this new chipset as well.
Does that mean the upcoming Exynos 1080 won't have integrated 5G? It would also highlight the fact that Samsung will sell separate 4G and 5G variants of its most important mid-range phones. That would make sense. These models sell very well in markets where there's no sign of 5G, so there's no point in equipping those with a 5G-enabled chipset.
The Bluetooth SIG listing doesn't reveal much about the Exynos 981 apart from its support for the Bluetooth 5.2 standard. This filing was made by the Samsung Cambridge Solution Centre which is a part of Samsung Electronics.
We'll keep an eye out for this and see what we can find out about the Exynos 981. Expect Samsung to announce its new chipsets in the coming weeks.
