Samsung Galaxy S23 with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 tested by Geekbench

2022-10-17

The first result from a Samsung Galaxy S23 has been discovered in the Geekbench database – this also makes it the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 result as well. There is a bit of speculation here, but the SM-S911U should be the US version of the S23 and the code name “Kalama” is very likely to refer to the next flagship chip from Qualcomm.

The CPU has an oddball core configuration – there is one prime core at 3.36GHz, four mid cores at 2.80GHz and three small cores at 2.02GHz. That lines up with a report by Ice Universe who claimed that the CPU will have a 1+2+2+3 configuration.

Samsung Galaxy S23 (SM-S911U) early Geekbench result (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset)
Samsung Galaxy S23 (SM-S911U) early Geekbench result (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset)

That is one Makalu-Elp prime core, two Makalu and two Matterhorn mid cores and three Klein-R1. We’re not 100% certain what the difference is between Makalu and Matterhorn, but according to some information the former is the improved Cortex-A715 while the latter is the original Cortex-A710 (the A715 is 20% more efficient and 5% faster than the A710). The Makalu-Elp is almost certainly based on the Cortex-X3 (25% faster than the X2 in ARM’s measurements), Klein is an A510-based core.

Samsung Galaxy S23 with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 tested by Geekbench

The first smartphones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 are a couple of months out, the Galaxy S23 is 3-4 months away, so we probably shouldn’t read too much into the benchmark scores. But the results look promising, the 8 Gen 1 inside the Galaxy S22 scores around 1,200/3,200 on the single/multi-core tests while the 8+ Gen 1 is usually around 1,300/4,200.

A few other things to note from this test – the base Galaxy S23 will come with 8GB of RAM, just like is last three predecessors. And it will run Android 13, but that’s not much of a surprise. Finally, the GPU is listed as Adreno 740 (the Gen 1 chips used Adreno 730).

Samsung Galaxy S23 with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 tested by Geekbench

Unfortunately, no one has found a result from a European Galaxy S23 phone. For a while it seemed all but certain that the 2023 models will use Snapdragon exclusively, but a later report claimed that Exynos isn’t out of the running.

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