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They say that time is too slow for those who wait and they are right! I’ve been waiting for critical security implementations for the Pixel 6 Pro for a few months, and the issue was finally corrected last weekend. Trust me. It took too long! And I was not alone, since the new flagship system update was delayed for everybody. So today, Pixel 6 (Pro) owners are being honored here at NextPit for their patience!
On the other hand, the frustrations around Samsung’s brand-new SoC had another chapter this week. After postponing the chip’s release, the Exynos 2200 was officially unveiled on Tuesday, but the benchmarks already leaked on the web failed to impress. And here is Samsung facing the loser’s crown again!
But before we move on to the best and worst of the past seven days, check out some of NextPit’s top headlines from the past week below:
Winner of the week: Pixel 6 (Pro) owners
Late last week, after we wrapped up the last edition of this column, Google released the January security update for the Pixel 6 series. Among the optimizations, we had a fix for a security flaw that allowed third-party applications with shell access to change colors and dimensions of certain system elements without requiring root access.
This is the kind of update you really want to get, but it was discontinued by Google due to problems with the December update file. In addition, several bugs were hampering the experience with the new flagships throughout this time.
Fortunately, this kind of issue is not recurring in the Pixel series as a whole, which is known for being the first to receive system updates in real-time. However, it is proving to be an issue related to the new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, which are packed with the new custom SoC designed by Google, named Tensor. And it looks like the owners of these two smartphones are now having to live with the disadvantages of being early adopters.
So, for the courage to embrace new technologies and the patience to live with mistakes and insecurities, the big winners of this week – and of many yet to come? – are the owners of Google’s 2021 top smartphones! And yes, I fall into this category, as does my colleague Benjamin Lucks. How about you?
Loser of the week: Exynos 2200 fails to impress
Samsung LSI landed among last week’s highlights on the loser’s side for the unexpected cancellation of the Exynos 2200 launch event. In contact with NextPit, the manufacturer had said that the announcement of the new SoC would occur “in line with the launch of a new smartphone.” And guess what happened this week?
Even without introducing a new phone to the market, Samsung Semiconductors decided to officially introduce the Exynos 2200 on Tuesday. On paper, we have a tri-cluster design, AMD RDNA 2 graphics, and a 4 nm architecture for better power efficiency. Also listed here is support for 8K video, raytracing, and 200 MP camera resolution. Everything seems really in place…
However, the week went by and we learned a little more about the Exynos 2200. According to the first leaked benchmarks of this SoC, the results are not really as impressive as all the marketing suggests. Despite the high performance (typical for this category), the Exynos 2200 still lags behind the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in some tests.
Since Samsung makes exclusive use of the high-performance Exynos SoCs, a performance comparison will only be possible with the launch of the manufacturer’s new flagship series. Moreover, this is not the first time that performance concerns have been related to the new CPU.
Even at the risk of sounding alarmist, the fact that Samsung relies on an aggressive marketing campaign on top of the new flagship series – and its hardware components – and does not instill confidence from day one, seems to me like sufficient justification to consider the manufacturer as the flop of the week.
And with that thought, I close my case this week! But before saying goodbye, I would like to know what did you think of this week’s picks? Share your opinion in the comments of this article.
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