With an improved Snapdragon 865 Plus, is the global Exynos 990 variant of the Galaxy Note 20 really Samsung’s ultimate flagship?
As with any new premium Samsung phone, the arrival of the Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra inevitably leads to talk about the US vs global variants, as well as their differences. Of course, the most controversial difference is the Snapdragon vs Exynos debate, or to be more specific in this case: the capabilities of the Snapdragon 865 Plus versus the Exynos 990. Samsung likes to avoid comparisons between its handset variants, and increasingly with good reason. The debate has been raging for generations of Galaxy models, but came to a head in early 2020 when benchmarks for the Exynos 990 versus Snapdragon 865 appeared. I won’t rehash that here, but the bottom line is that the Exynos 990 was not only slower, particularly for gaming, but also turned out to be less energy efficient in CPU-demanding scenarios. Unfortunately, for buyers in the West — outside the US — the introduction of the even more powerful 865 Plus widens the gap between Samsung’s two regional configurations even further. The upgraded Plus model provides around a 7% boost over the 865 in our testing of the Asus ROG Phone 3. Meanwhile, the Exynos model remains unchanged, leaving the global Galaxy Note 20 in the same underwhelming bracket as the Galaxy S20. That’s not a great selling point for what’s supposed to be Samsung’s ultimate mobile workhorse. This isn’t just the musings of an SoC enthusiast, either. Our readers have been quite divided on the issue too. Approximately two-thirds of poll respondents noted that the inclusion of the Exynos 990 would or might negatively influence their Note 20 purchasing decision. Normally at Android Authority, we wouldn’t knock a phone for providing adequate performance. After all, we’re quite big fans of many of today’s more affordable handsets. Plus, the Exynos 990 isn’t slow in real terms, only by comparison. However, I think there’s an exception to be made when the phone is marketed as the best the company can offer, and the same premium prices are charged for two increasingly different products. We’ll fully test the two Galaxy Note 20 devices once we have both models in house in order to get a more definitive performance difference between the two. However, it’s clear from the outset that the Snapdragon Note 20 and Exynos Note 20 don’t offer consumers the same experience in terms of performance or battery life. This gives Samsung customers and fans legitimate cause for complaint.
