Samsung Galaxy S21 series in India likely to opt for the Exynos 2100 processor

The Samsung Galaxy S21 series launch is about a month away, but information around about the next flagships has been coming at full speed. New developments shed light on the regional differences between the variants in India and other countries.

While the official confirmation is pending, the Samsung Opera House store is apparently dishing out details about the impending smartphones already. The Galaxy S21 launch date in India will be January 14, alongside the global unveiling. Blind pre-orders are already open against an advance of Rs 2,000, but it looks like the sales will commence only on January 29. In India, the available colour options will be grey, pink, purple, black and white, though not every colour will be available for every model.

This is a big deal as Exynos variants have usually had relatively worse performance and battery life than their Snapdragon counterparts.

Based on additional information received by Android Authority, the Indian variants of the S21 will indeed be powered by the Exynos 2100 chipset. It looks like the Snapdragon 888 variants will once again be limited to the U.S. The chipset is yet to be announced by Samsung, but we did get a glimpse of it on Geekbench recently. If those specifications are to be believed, it will be an octa-core SoC with four Cortex A55 cores for efficiency, three Cortex A78 cores and one yet-to-be-confirmed performance core — likely to be the new Cortex X1. Some rumours also mentioned the inclusion of a custom GPU designed by AMD, but there’s not much substance to keep that claim currently.

The pricing is expected to be similar to the S20 series. At launch, there will be three variants of the device, viz. the Samsung Galaxy S21, the S21 Plus and the S21 Ultra, with the key difference being in the display size, battery capacity and cameras. We also expect to see the debut of the Samsung ISOCELL HM3, which is supposed to be a significantly better 108MP image sensor for high-end smartphones. The stage will be shared by the Galaxy Buds Pro, Samsung’s next premium TWS with noise cancellation.