Samsung Exynos 990 phones: benchmarks, gaming & which to buy

What the Exynos 990 is

Samsung's 2019 flagship chip and a famous cautionary tale: the hardware generation was glorious, the silicon ran hot. It ranks #49 of 79 in our catalog today — AnTuTu about 907K, Geekbench 6 near 1,220 single-core and 3,060 multi-core — but its reputation rests on battery drain and throttling complaints that Samsung fixed a generation later. Full scores on the Exynos 990 page.

Performance and gaming

Around 16/100 on our gaming scale in 2026 terms: fine for everyday apps and casual play, visibly tired in anything demanding, and the thermal behavior that defined the chip's era is a physical property no update changed. The Mali-G77 GPU pushed 120 Hz QHD+ panels when rivals settled for less — impressive then, mid-range now.

Phones that ship with it

Buying advice

At $115–220 used, the S20 family is a hardware bargain with an asterisk. The S20 Ultra near $165 and S20 Plus near $220 still give you a 120 Hz high-resolution OLED and periscope-class zoom hardware — our S20 Ultra review has details — but the chip means modest battery life, warmth under load, and a software window firmly in its final years. Treat it as a tinkerer's or backup phone. For daily use at this money, the MediaTek-based Dimensity 7300 generation is the saner pick, and Samsung's own next try, the Exynos 2100, fixed most of the 990's sins.