Samsung announced its brand new Galaxy A series only weeks ago. One of the biggest upgrades when it comes to the Galaxy A55 is its system on a chip (SoC)- the Exynos 1480. However, there wasn’t much known about the SoC until now. The new Exynos 1480 is Samsung’s Foundry’s new midrange hero when it comes to processors.

The new processor is built using Samsung’s new 4nm process. This has resulted in the processor being more power efficient and also more power than the Exynos 1380 before it. The new 1480 is an octacore comes with a new configuration of four Cortex-A78 cores clocked at 2.75GHz and four Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 2.0GHz. This setup of four performance cores (Cortex-A78) and four efficiency cores (Cortex-A55) allows the processor to deliver better performance at lower power drains and also keep base power drains at lower level than before. This lends itself to better battery life and better overall performance.

The Exynos 1480 is Samsung’s first midrange Exynos chip to come with the Xclipse graphics system. The Xclipse 530 GPU on the SoC uses AMD’s RDNA architecture. Although, it’s not clear if it’s using RDNA2 or RDNA3 as the website only states that its using the “latest mobile RDNA architecture”. The new Xclipse 530 GOU boasts a 53% performance improvement over the previous generation. It also supports ray tracing (variable rate shading) and supersampling (super resolution). This promises better gaming and graphical performance in devices using the Exynos 1480.

On device AI is becoming increasingly more important for devices regardless of whether they are flagships, midrange or entry-level. To that end, the Exynos 1480 is coming with an improved AI Engine that runs on an enhanced NPU. This combination is responsible for a near 4x improvement of NPU performance over its predecessor. This feature also helps reinforce the security of your data on your device as it reduces the need for data to leave the device to be processed. It also results in smoother, more fluid AI functions.

The new processor also comes with a 5G modem that supports both mmWave and sub-6GHz bandwidths. It boasts a download theorectical maximum download speed of up to 5.1Gbps which is twice the speed as the previous generation. It also supports WiFi 6E (ax), Bluetooth 5.3 LE and GNSS positioning.

When it comes to image processing, the Exynos 1480 comes has a pretty capable ISP (image singal processor). It supports up to 200-megapixel in single camera mode, a single 64-megapixel at camera with 4K video record at 30fps or dual camera setup with dual 32-megapixel sensors that support 4K recording at 60fps. Display-wise, it supports a Full HD+ display with a max refresh rate of 144 Hz. It also supports high speed RAM with the LPDDR4x and LPDDR5.

So far, only the Samsung Galaxy A55 is using the smartphone. It won’t be surprising to see the processor make it to more devices as the year progresses.