A few weeks ago, benchmarks of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus were first leaked. As expected for two phones expected to use the same core Snapdragon 888 chipset, a vanilla Galaxy S21 now appears in Geekbench with similar results.

The phone, model number SM-G991U and running on the "Lahaina" chipset, scored 1,075 in the single-core test and 2,916 in the multi-core. This is slightly weaker than the S21 Plus, which achieved scores of 1,120 and 3,319 in the two tests, but within the general margin of error for identical chipsets tested in different situations (for proof, see the Samsung Galaxy S20's score range).

While these are solid numbers for a smooth Android experience, the bad news is that Qualcomm's 5nm Snapdragon 888 SoC does not appear to have done enough to close the gap with the Apple A14 in the iPhone 12 That is, it appears to be.

However, it is important to note that benchmarks do not tell the whole story--especially for a new chipset like the Snapdragon 888, which was only officially announced three days ago. In preparation for the S21's rumored January release date, the new chip's performance will be as high as possible. There must be a lot of optimization going on behind the scenes to improve the performance of the new chip as much as possible. And even if it is truly superior, some of the Snapdragon 888's major improvements in photography, AI, gaming, etc. will not be detected in Geekbench tests, as Geekbench simply measures compute speed, which is a very important aspect of the Snapdragon 888's performance.

Still, another subplot of the Samsung Galaxy S21 release becomes a bit more interesting. For the past several years, Galaxy S and Note devices purchased in the U.S. have used Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip, while those purchased in other regions have been powered by Samsung's own Exynos chip. Generally speaking, the Exynos chips are not inferior, but they were noticeably slower when tested side-by-side.

This year, however, the gap seems to have narrowed a bit. Previously leaked benchmarks of the Exynos 2100 show Geekbench 5 scores of 1,040 and 3,107, which are quite close to the S21's scores revealed here.

It remains to be seen whether this performance will be maintained in both versions of the device, which will be available in early 2021; while the usual iterative changes from S20 to S21 are expected, the real action is likely to come from the LTPO display, two optical zoom lenses, S Pen set to take place in the planned S21 Ultra model, which will feature the possibility of support.