Every Smartphone Processor Explained in 6 Minutes — Transcript

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1. 0:00Every phone you've ever owned has a tiny
2. 0:02brain inside it, and that brain comes in
3. 0:04more flavors than most people realize.
4. 0:07Let's go through the major players.
5. 0:09Qualcomm Snapdragon.
6. 0:11If you've bought an Android phone in the
7. 0:13US, there's a good chance it's running a
8. 0:15Snapdragon chip. Qualcomm makes these,
9. 0:18and they're basically the default choice
10. 0:20for flagship and mid-range Android
11. 0:22devices from Samsung, OnePlus, Motorola,
12. 0:26and a dozen other brands. What makes
13. 0:28Snapdragon so dominant isn't just raw
14. 0:30speed, it's the modem. Qualcomm has
15. 0:33spent decades perfecting cellular
16. 0:35connectivity, so their chips tend to
17. 0:37have some of the best 5G performance
18. 0:40around. The flagship line, the
19. 0:42Snapdragon 8 series, shows up in phones
20. 0:45that cost $800 and up, while the 6 and 7
21. 0:48series power the more affordable stuff.
22. 0:51One quirk worth knowing, Samsung
23. 0:53sometimes uses Snapdragon in the US and
24. 0:56their own chip elsewhere, which is why
25. 0:58two people with the same Galaxy phone
26. 1:00can have noticeably different
27. 1:02performance.
28. 1:03Qualcomm has also been pushing into
29. 1:05laptops recently with its Snapdragon X
30. 1:07series, trying to challenge Intel and
31. 1:10Apple on battery life. So, this isn't
32. 1:12just a phone story anymore. It's slowly
33. 1:14becoming a bigger piece of the whole
34. 1:16computing world.
35. 1:18Apple A series and Bionic. Apple doesn't
36. 1:21buy processors off the shelf, they
37. 1:23design their own, and that's a huge part
38. 1:25of why iPhones feel so snappy even with
39. 1:27less RAM than competing Android phones.
40. 1:30The A series, which Apple branded as
41. 1:33Bionic for years before dropping that
42. 1:35name, is built using ARM architecture,
43. 1:39but customized so heavily that it barely
44. 1:41resembles anything else on the market.
45. 1:44The advantage here is tight integration.
46. 1:46Apple controls the chip, the operating
47. 1:48system, and the software all at once, so
48. 1:51they can optimize in ways that a company
49. 1:53buying a generic chip simply can't. This
50. 1:56is also why an iPhone from 3 years ago
51. 1:58can still run the newest iOS updates
52. 2:00smoothly, while an Android phone of the
53. 2:03same age might struggle. It's the same
54. 2:05reasoning behind Apple's move to bring
55. 2:07these chips into Macs. The M-series
56. 2:09processors in MacBooks are basically
57. 2:11bigger, more powerful cousins of the
58. 2:13same design philosophy that started in
59. 2:15the iPhone.
60. 2:17Samsung Exynos
61. 2:19Samsung doesn't just use Qualcomm's
62. 2:21chips, they make their own, too, called
63. 2:23Exynos. These show up in Galaxy phones
64. 2:26sold in Europe, parts of Asia, and other
65. 2:28regions outside North America. For
66. 2:31years, Exynos had a reputation problem,
67. 2:34running hotter and draining battery
68. 2:36faster than the Snapdragon equivalent in
69. 2:38the exact same phone model. Samsung has
70. 2:40worked hard to close that gap,
71. 2:42partnering with AMD to bring proper
72. 2:45gaming-grade graphics into recent Exynos
73. 2:47chips.
74. 2:48MediaTek Dimensity and Helio MediaTek
75. 2:52used to be the budget option, the chip
76. 2:54you'd find in phones that cost $150
77. 2:57and nobody talked about. That's changed
78. 2:59a lot. Their Dimensity line now competes
79. 3:02directly with Snapdragon in the
80. 3:04mid-range and even flagship space,
81. 3:07particularly in phones sold across Asia
82. 3:10and by brands like Xiaomi, Realme, and
83. 3:12Oppo.
84. 3:13The older Helio series still exists for
85. 3:16genuinely budget devices. What's
86. 3:18interesting about MediaTek's rise is
87. 3:21that it's forced Qualcomm to actually
88. 3:23compete on price, which has been good
89. 3:25news for anyone shopping for a phone
90. 3:27that doesn't cost a fortune. A few years
91. 3:29ago, saying a phone had a MediaTek chip
92. 3:32was almost a red flag among tech
93. 3:34reviewers. Now, it's common to see a
94. 3:36Dimensity chip outperform a similarly
95. 3:39priced Snapdragon in independent
96. 3:41benchmarks, so that old stigma is fading
97. 3:44fast.
98. 3:45Google Tensor Google's Pixel phones run
99. 3:48on a chip called Tensor, and it's a
100. 3:50slightly different animal from the rest
101. 3:51of this list. Tensor isn't really
102. 3:54designed to win benchmark tests or crush
103. 3:56every speed comparison. It's built
104. 3:58around machine learning tasks, things
105. 4:00like real-time call translation, photo
106. 4:03processing, and voice recognition
107. 4:06running directly on the device instead
108. 4:08of in the cloud. Under the hood, Tensor
109. 4:11is actually built with a lot of help
110. 4:13from Samsung's manufacturing and even
111. 4:15borrows some Exynos components. But,
112. 4:18Google layers its own AI-focused cores
113. 4:21on top. If you've ever used a Pixel's
114. 4:23ability to transcribe a call as it
115. 4:25happens, that's Tensor doing the heavy
116. 4:28lifting. HiSilicon Kirin.
117. 4:30Kirin chips are made by HiSilicon, which
118. 4:33is owned by Huawei. And for a while,
119. 4:35these were genuinely competitive with
120. 4:37Snapdragon and Apple's chips, especially
121. 4:39in camera processing.
122. 4:41Then, US trade restrictions cut Huawei
123. 4:43off from the manufacturing technology
124. 4:45needed to produce cutting-edge chips,
125. 4:48and Kirin's development stalled hard for
126. 4:50several years. Huawei has since found
127. 4:53workarounds using domestic Chinese
128. 4:54manufacturing, though the chips still
129. 4:57lag a generation or two behind the
130. 4:59industry's best. It's a good example of
131. 5:01how geopolitics can reshape something as
132. 5:04seemingly unrelated as phone hardware.
133. 5:06And it's also why Huawei phones
134. 5:09essentially disappeared from Western
135. 5:10markets, even though the company still
136. 5:12sells enormous volumes back home in
137. 5:15China.
138. 5:16Unisoc.
139. 5:17Unisoc is the name you've probably never
140. 5:20heard, and that's kind of the point.
141. 5:22This Chinese manufacturer makes budget
142. 5:24processors that show up in some of the
143. 5:26cheapest smartphones sold worldwide,
144. 5:29often priced under $100. They're not
145. 5:32built for gaming or heavy multitasking.
146. 5:34They're built to make basic smartphone
147. 5:36functionality accessible in markets
148. 5:38where every dollar of the bill of
149. 5:40materials matters.
150. 5:42Custom ARM designs.
151. 5:44Almost everything on this list, aside
152. 5:46from a few exceptions, is built on ARM
153. 5:50architecture, rather than the X86 design
154. 5:54you'd find in a typical Windows laptop.
155. 5:56ARM licenses its chip blueprints out to
156. 6:00companies who then customize them to
157. 6:02their own needs. That's why a Snapdragon
158. 6:05chip and an Apple chip can both
159. 6:07technically be ARM-based while
160. 6:10performing completely differently. The
161. 6:12companies are making very different
162. 6:13design choices with the same underlying
163. 6:16foundation.
164. 6:18That's the landscape of smartphone
165. 6:20processors as it stands today. If you
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