Another Exynos-powered 5G phone is here, and it's not by Samsung

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.