Samsung's 7nm Exynos 9825 goes official on the eve of Galaxy Note 10 launch

The Exynos 9825 will power the international variants of the Galaxy Note 10.

What you need to know

• With the Exynos 9825, Samsung is switching to a 7nm manufacturing node.
• The chipset shares the same cores as the Exynos 9810, but the switch to 7nm should eke out more energy efficiency.
• The Exynos 9825 will power global variants of the Note 10 series.

Samsung switched to the 8nm node with last year's Exynos 9810, and while the manufacturer made huge strides when it comes to CPU performance, energy efficiency is an area where the platform lags behind its rivals. Samsung is now looking to fix that with the Exynos 9825, which is built on a 7nm LPP node.

The Exynos 9825 has the same M4 cores that we saw in the Exynos 9810, so there isn't going to be a huge performance differential between the two chipsets. It has two M4 cores clocked at 2.73GHz that act as the prime cores — similar to what Qualcomm does with the single 2.84GHz core on the Snapdragon 855 — alongside two standard Cortex A75 cores at up to 2.4GHz and four energy-efficient Cortex A55 cores.

On the GPU side of things, the Exynos 9825 has the same Mali G76 as the Exynos 9810, in the same MP12 configuration, meaning 12 cores are active. It is possible Samsung may have increased the frequencies this time around to give the 9825 a slight edge over its predecessor. The Exynos 9825 also has a Category 20 LTE-A modem, with Samsung noting that the chipset is ready for 5G via the Exynos 5100 modem.

Given the timing of the launch, it's a near-certainty that the Exynos 9825 will power the global variants of the Galaxy Note 10. Samsung is slated to launch two sizes this time around: a standard version with a 6.3-inch screen, and a Plus option with a 6.8-inch display. The launch kicks off at 4pm ET, so check back later in the day for more on the Galaxy Note 10.