Benchmarks for the Samsung Galaxy S21 have been discovered, and they appear to be bad news for Samsung's 2021 flagship.

The benchmarks, which use Samsung's upcoming chipset Exynos 1000, reveal rather disappointing scores. While performance is not a priority for all users, it is a bad sign that Samsung is struggling to squeeze power out of its new device.

Recorded in Geekbench 5, the same benchmarking app we use when reviewing phones, the scores are for a Samsung device codenamed SM-G996B, using a chip called Exynos 2100 and 8GB RAM, running Android 11 running on the device.

The results, shared by Twitter user Abhishek Yadav, were 1,038 points for the single-core test and 3,060 points for the multi-core test. This is better than this year's Exynos 990 in the non-US Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Note 20

. This is in sharp contrast to the results leaked in May, in which the Exynos 1000 outperformed the Snapdragon 865 by a factor of 3 in a graphics benchmark test.

Compare this to the Snapdragon 875, Qualcomm's flagship chip for next year and the chipset found in many top-tier Android phones, including the US version of the Galaxy S21. The independently leaked Geekbench results show them at 1,102 and 4,113, respectively. Each year's Snapdragon 8 series chips tend to outperform Samsung's silicon when it comes to benchmarks, but this difference is particularly significant.

However, the top mobile chips in every generation are designed by Apple, and the latest A14 Bionic has just been installed in the latest iPad Air; we won't be able to test Apple's new chipset in the iPhone 12 until October at the earliest. However, it is likely to offer better performance than both Exynos and Snapdragon chips, especially when it comes to single-core performance.

But aside from that, the A13 Bionic in the iPhone 11 series and iPhone SE 2020 already delivers better performance than the Exynos 1000. iPhone 11 Pro tests show that the A13 Bionic has a single core portion and a Greenback 5 score of 1,337 and 3,509 in the multi-core test.

The A14 Bionic is expected to wipe out the Exynos 1000 as it is 40% faster than the A13 Bionic.

However, there are a few nuances here. First, the leaked benchmarks may not be that accurate, and there is no way to know what test conditions the chips were under. And, Samsung has ample time to optimize for more performance from the system-on-chip.

Furthermore, AMD is working with Samsung to integrate their graphics technology into their Exynos chips. So while Geekbench 5 scores may not be impressive, it is possible that the Exynos 1000 will come with ultra-high-performance graphics.

Galaxy S series phones are released around February each year, so there are still five months before the S21 (or S30) is released. If these performance issues are simply software problems, there is plenty of time for Samsung's engineers and programmers to make improvements and close the gap, if not surpass the competition.

Another new leak confirms the battery capacity of the Galaxy S21 Plus. According to a low-resolution photo released by the Korean electronics regulator, the battery believed to be used in the S21 Plus has a rated capacity of 4,660 mAh.

Rated capacity differs from typical capacity. Even though batteries are manufactured in the same way, they are all slightly different, so the rated capacity represents the smallest size obtainable in a cell phone, even if the average phone has a little more space.

Thus, to compare these minimums, the Galaxy S20 Plus has a rated capacity of 4,370 mAh, which indicates that the S21 Plus' battery will increase slightly, perhaps to a typical capacity of 4,700 mAh or 4,800 mAh.

According to previous leaks, the smaller Galaxy S21 has a rated battery capacity of 3,880 mAh, which is the same as the S20's rated capacity. In other words, the smallest model in the S21 series is not likely to have an increased battery capacity.

As mentioned earlier, the Galaxy S21 is expected to be announced early next year, so it will be a little while before we can confirm if these leaks and rumors are accurate. But if you want Samsung's flagship smartphone but can't afford $1,000, Samsung's new Galaxy S20 FE might be worth a look.