Published in Mobiles

Galaxy Alpha packs first 20nm Exynos

by on03 October 2014



Intel LTE-A Cat 6 chip inside too

The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is coming to a few markets with an Exynos 5 Octa (Exynos 5433) chip and this is a 20nm part. Most markets will get the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 version and we believe that the Exynos version is reserved for South Korea and parts of Asia.

Samsung's latest phone, the Galaxy Alpha, also has a 20nm Samsung SoC inside and it is the Exynos 5 Octa 5430, a big.LITTLE part with Cortex-A15 clocked at 1.8GHz and backed by four 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7 cores.

galaxyalpha

There is no doubt about what is inside the new phone, since iFixit made sure that it exposed all parts of this stainless steel framed phone. The Galaxy Alpha looks a bit like an oversized version of the iPhone 5S, as the metal frame resembles the iPhone 5S’s sharp design. Still, Samsung is using an exchangeable battery and a easy to replace back cover.

First Exynos 5430 20nm 8 core phone


Exynos 5 Octa or Exynos 5430 uses an ARM Mali-T628 GPU MP6 clocked at 600 MHz capable of delivering 122 GFLOPS. It also uses LPDDR3 memory at 1060 MHz and is indeed the first ARM Android device based 20nm silicon to hit the market.

The biggest surprise is the Intel LTE chip, branded Intel PMB9933 P10 DS XG726G H1429 F429A549. This is a consumer-friendly, easy to remember name, but you might know this chip as the Intel XMM 7260. In case you don’t, this is a Cat 6 (300 Mbps) capable modem that supports carrier aggregation. We saw a demo of the chip running at 300Mbps and simulating carrier aggregation back in March, at the Mobile World Congress 2014.

The chip supports more than 30 3GPP bands, 21 bands simultaneously in a single SKU as well as LTE FDD/TDD, WCDMA/HSPA+, TD-SCDMA/TD-HSPA/EDGE for global markets.

Intel XMM 7260 joined by Broadcom, Maxim and Samsung chips


Apparently the chip is shipping and Samsung is one of the first big players to have it in their phone. Intel has indicated that the chip was undergoing testing earlier this year by tier-one service providers and it was ready to ship in Q2 2014. The chip is coming from Infineon, which Intel acquired back in 2010 and to refresh your memory Infineon was one of the key players in the baseband market and it landed a few early iPhone designs.

The phone has two cameras, a rear facing 12-megapixel unit and a front facing 2.1-megapixel shooter. The device features an unimpressive 1810mAh battery. The rest of the package includes a range of chips, such as the Maxim Integrated MAX77804K system PSoC, Broadcom BCM4753IA1, Wolfson Microelectronics WM5110E Low Power Audio System, RF Micro Devices RF8095 F14N6GS, Skyworks 7851 0268 while the front of the phone's motherboard comes with Intel PMB5747, Samsung S2MPS13 Power Management IC, SWKT GRG78 Antenna Switch Module, W906A1 L1411, SKC TI 45I AHCX and 04424 02163 S3FWRN S42403.

The phone retails for about €550 with VAT, contract free, and frankly spending so much money on a 4.7-inch 720p phone sounds a bit too much despite the new chip and metal frame.

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