Samsung’s Exynos 1680 Arrives With Meaningful Upgrades for the Mid-Range

Mid-range chips rarely generate much excitement, but Samsung’s newly announced Exynos 1680 has enough going on under the hood to deserve a closer look. Built on Samsung Foundry’s 4nm SF4X process, it’s the direct successor to the Exynos 1580 and is headed for the Galaxy A57 5G.

The core configuration leans into a familiar but well-balanced split: five Cortex-A720 cores handling heavy workloads at up to 2.9 GHz, paired with three Cortex-A520 efficiency cores running at 1.95 GHz. That asymmetry is deliberate, keeping battery drain in check while still delivering headroom for demanding tasks.

Graphics come courtesy of the Xclipse 550 GPU, built on AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture. Samsung claims a 15% improvement in graphics performance over its predecessor, driven by additional Render Blocks and Work Group Processors. The chip supports Full HD+ displays at up to 144 Hz, which matters for users who care about fluid scrolling and gaming without paying flagship prices.

The NPU reaches 19.6 TOPS, a 33% jump from the 1580. That number isn’t just a spec sheet flex. Stronger on-device AI processing translates directly to faster photo processing, smarter scene detection, and more responsive voice features.

Speaking of cameras, the ISP now handles sensors up to 200 megapixels and 4K video at 60 fps, with notable improvements in color accuracy and contrast.

On the connectivity side, the integrated 5G modem supports download speeds up to 5.1 Gbps, alongside Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 6.1, and NFC.