Samsung’s Exynos chipsets can be found in its own flagship phones, but Vivo has also decided to use them in its latest mid-range 5G phone.
The Chinese brand announced the Vivo S6 5G this week, packing an upper-mid range Exynos 980 processor. This chipset offers the latest CPU cores, featuring two Cortex-A77 cores paired with six power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores. You can also expect a Mali-G76 MP5 GPU, an NPU for machine learning, and an 8nm manufacturing process.
Samsung’s chipset also delivers sub-6Ghz 5G support, as the Vivo S6 5G name implies, owing to an integrated 5G modem. There’s no mmWave capability here, but sub-6Ghz is the most popular 5G standard right now anyway.
Vivo’s phone isn’t too bad in other areas either, packing a 6.44-inch FHD+ OLED screen, 8GB of RAM, 128GB or 256GB of storage, and a 4,500mAh battery with 18W charging.
The Vivo S6 5G also delivers a 32MP selfie camera in a waterdrop notch, and a quad rear camera. The latter consists of a 48MP main shooter, 8MP ultra-wide snapper, 2MP macro camera, and 2MP depth sensor.
Other specs worth knowing include an in-display fingerprint sensor, 3.5mm port, USB-C, and FunTouch OS atop Android 10.
Vivo’s mid-range 5G phone starts at 2,698 yuan (~$380) for the 8GB/128GB option, and 2,998 yuan (~$422) for the 8GB/256GB variant. It’s not the first Vivo device to use the Exynos 980 chipset, but it’s certainly cheaper than the Vivo X30 series, which ranges from ~$471 to ~$615.
We’ve asked Vivo about wider availability and will update the article when they get back to us. But if the company can bring this device to other markets without a huge price increase, we could be looking at one of the cheapest 5G phones outside China.
