Remember that deal AMD made with Samsung wherein the latter would use Radeon (RDNA) based GPUs in its upcoming smartphones to challenge Qualcomm and Apple’s potent offerings? Yeah, it seems that the first product of this partnership is about to come out soon: The Galaxy S21 series. According to SamMobile, the S21 will be launched “soon” with a slew of upgrades including an all-powerful Radeon GPU, a dual front camera (48MP +12 MP) with optical image stabilization and 5G support across the board.
This will be the best front camera Samsung has ever used on any of its smartphones and considering how many people use their smartphones just for selfies, this will likely be well received.
There are rumored to be three models just like the existing lineup, all with 5G support and storage options ranging from 128GB to 256GB. Here’s the interesting bit: The Radeon GPU that will power these new Galaxy smartphones will be nearly 2.5x as fast compared to the Adreno GPU paired with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 (from leaked benchmarks). That kind of performance should also push it past Apple’s proprietary graphics solutions, something Samsung hasn’t done in a very very long time.
The new Exynos 1000 SoC is expected to power the Galaxy S21. Based on Samsung’s 5nm node, it’ll use ARM’s Cortex X1, A78, and A55 cores in a 1-3-4 arrangement. It’s unclear whether the Radeon GPU will be featured on all three devices or just the flagship variant but the chances of it being limited to the latter are quite high.
Lastly, as far as the pricing is concerned, we’re likely to see a $1,400 to $1,500 price tag for the flagship with the “entry-level” models costing around $999.
