[aeadio]

The S23 Ultra has a Qualcomm CPU (Snapdragon 8 gen 2), which is manufactured on TSMC 4 nm. The iPhone 12 uses an Apple A14, manufactured on TSMC 5 nm.

This is more about Qualcomm being uncompetitive performance-wise, which has been true pretty much since the start of the smartphone wars.

[smoldesu]

Interesting! I assumed it was the annual Exynos rag, but I guess I thought wrong. Definitely seems like the onus falls on Qualcomm this time.

[aeadio]

Samsung has consistently manufactured their Galaxy S series in two different versions -- a Qualcomm one, and an Exynos one (Samsung's in-house CPU division), with different geographic markets getting different options. America has always gotten the Qualcomm version (which has consistently been faster), but other markets have seen shifts over time.

The S23 Ultra went Qualcomm-only for the first time. In the year running up, they've been slowly expanding Qualcomm to more markets instead of Exynos.

It seems like they're gradually phasing out Exynos, at least from the higher-end phones -- since they've always struggled to produce an SoC competitive with even Qualcomm, which is already behind the curve compared to Apple.