Beginning with the Galaxy S2, Samsung started releasing two variants of its flagship handsets — one powered by a Qualcomm processor and the other one by its own Exynos processor. However, during the Galaxy S5 unveiling, the company did not mention anything about an Exynos-powered model, which was pretty surprising. This led many to believe that Samsung might not launch an Exynos powered S5 this year after the colossal failure that last year’s Exynos 5 Octa-core variant was.

However, as it turns out, the company has indeed launched an octa-core variant of the Galaxy S5 but decided to be quiet about it. Not many details about the Octa-core variant are available currently, except that four out of its eight cores will be clocked at 2.1GHz. Samsung’s Octa-core processors have followed ARM’s big.LITTLE technology to deliver the best of both worlds — performance and battery life. The four ‘little’ cores are based on ARM’s Cortex-A7 architecture which barely sip power and are used in day-to-day tasks. The four ‘big’ cores are based on the Cortex-A15 architecture and are used under when the system is under heavy load.

Sadly, Samsung’s execution fell short with the S4’s Exynos variant where users frequently reported excessive heat and poor battery life. Hopefully, the company has learnt from its mistake and fixed the issues in the latest Exynos processor used in the Galaxy S5.

It will also be interesting to see how the octa-core chip stacks up against Qualcomm’s latest high-end mobile chip — the Snapdragon 801.