In the last few years, Samsung Systems LSI's Exynos SoCs haven't been competitive with those from Qualcomm, both in the flagship and mid-range segments of the market. In particular, the flagship Exynos SoCs couldn't compete with the Snapdragon 800 series year after year, to the point that Samsung disbanded its Exynos M custom CPU core program at the Samsung Austin Research Center (SARC), with the Exynos 990 being the last Exynos SoC to feature custom cores for the foreseeable future. Next year's Exynos flagship SoC, referred to as the Exynos 1000 or the Exynos 2100, will use ARM's stock Cortex-A and Cortex-X CPU cores after five years of custom Exynos M cores. The mid-range Exynos SoCs never used Samsung's custom cores, but they also failed to compete in the past. This changed with the Exynos 980, which is a more capable SoC than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765. Now, Samsung has confirmed the existence of its successor, the Exynos 1080.

Samsung recently revealed on Weibo that it was working on the Exynos 1080, which would function as the successor of the mid-range Exynos 990. Now, Samsung Semiconductor has confirmed the new chipset to Android Authority. It has also confirmed that the chip would be equipped with the latest ARM Cortex-A78 CPU cores as well as the Mali-G78 GPU (the GPU core configuration was not specified). A purported AnTuTu benchmark revealed the Exynos 1080 will have four ARM Cortex-A78 big cores and four ARM Cortex-A55 little cores.

The new chip could be built on a 5nm manufacturing process like the Apple A14 and the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 875. Samsung's flagship Exynos SoC is also expected to be built on a 5nm process. A 5nm process by itself will result in a smaller design, performance gains and improved power efficiency. Samsung told Android Authority that a full announcement of the SoC was on the way.

The Exynos 1080's purported AnTuTu overall result shows it outperforming the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 with a score of 693,600, which is a surprising result considering the nature of the chips. However, it's not actually so surprising considering that the chip has four ARM Cortex-A78 cores, which are faster than the Cortex-A77 cores used in the Snapdragon 865. The GPU performance score is higher on the Exynos 1080 as well, which presumably means Samsung will use a high GPU core configuration of the Exynos 1080.

According to leaker Ice Universe, the Exynos 1080 will be used by a mid-range Vivo X-series phone first. The Exynos 980 was used on the Vivo X30, although the Vivo X50 series moved to Snapdragon chips instead. The Vivo X60, however, will supposedly feature the new Exynos 1080 with a 120Hz OLED display and 8GB of RAM. Mid-range phones featuring the Exynos 1080 in 2021 will be a whole lot faster than the current mid-range phones we have today.