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New Exynos 9610 teases slow-mo video and camera bokeh for Galaxy-A phones
- Samsung has announced its latest Exynos chip, the Exynos 7 Series 9610.
- Previous 7 Series chips have been used in Samsung’s mid-range devices such as this year’s Galaxy A8.
- The chip could allow 480fps slow-mo video recordings and single camera bokeh effects.
Samsung has announced its latest application processor, the Exynos 7 Series 9610. The chip’s headline features include support for deep learning-based image processing and 480fps slow-motion video recording in Full HD. While it is not yet known which phones will use this chip, previous Exynos 7 series SoCs have been used in Samsung’s high mid-range devices such as this year’s Galaxy A8.
On this chip, Samsung says it has combined vision and image processing with a neural network engine, a popular trend in high-end smartphone chips right now, which should result in some powerful new features for the mid-tier.
With a neural network engine, phones that use the chip should get plenty of cool camera tricks.
For example, Samsung says that the chip boasts enhanced facial recognition which should be able to recognize a face even when it is partially obscured by another object. Additionally, it will enable the ever popular bokeh portrait effect on devices with a single camera by utilizing its smart depth sensing capabilities. Samsung’s latest SoC should also be able to produce better quality images in low light by merging multiple frames into a single photo.
As well as the still image capabilities, the Exynos 9680 will enable phones to record 480fps slow-motion video in full HD, which means future mid-range phones will get to play around with some fun, high-quality slow-motion video effects. In terms of playing back video, its multi-format codec supports up to 4K at 120fps.
A high level of performance is provided by the octa-core CPU configuration, with four Cortex-A73 cores running at 2.3GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.6GHz. This should keep things running smoothly even when multitasking and offers up plenty of peak single core performance for more intensive apps. There is also a second-gen Bifrost based Mali-G72 to power games with realistic graphics, although Samsung is keeping the core count under wraps for now. Finally, the chip supports a Category 13 LTE modem for up to 600Mbps download speeds, Bluetooth 5.0, and 802.11ac 2×2 MIMO Wifi.
According to Samsung, the Exynos 9610 is expected to start mass production in the second half of 2018, this could put it in contention to be used in phones from either late this year or early 2019.