Samsung has introduced the latest member of its Exynos processor lineup. The Exynos 4212 is a 1.5 GHz dual core processor which the company says has a faster graphics and uses less power than earlier chips.
Samsung says the Exynos 4212 features graphics capabilities that are 50 percent faster than those found in the 1.2 GHz Exynos 4210 processor — but still uses about 30 percent less power, which should lead to longer battery life.
The new 32nm ARM Cortex-A9 chip supports 1080p HD video playback and HDMI 1.4 video processing. Samsung says it will start offering the new chip to manufactuers by the end of the year, which means we could start seeing Exynos 4212-powered devices in early 2012 — although to be honest, there aren’t a lot of Exynos 4210 products in the wild right now.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see new products with both the 4210 and the 4212 chips in 2012. It sometimes takes a while for manufacturers to bring products to market — NVIDA’s Tegra 2 platform didn’t exactly catch fire right away either, but now it powers the vast majority of devices running Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb and up.