Samsung rumored to go Snapdragon-only on Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S26

Ben Schoon | Oct 23 2024 - 6:55 am PT

Following Qualcomm’s announcement of the Snapdragon 8 Elite this week, reporting has revealed that Samsung may end up going Snapdragon-only for the next couple of years in Galaxy S25 and S26.

The rumor mill around what chip Samsung will use in its upcoming flagships has been mixed, with reports of everything from the status quo – a mix of Snapdragon and Exynos –, a heavier emphasis on Exynos, and even word of MediaTek in some devices. But, now, a rumor claims that Samsung will solely be using Snapdragon, and not just for one generation.

Ice Universe says on Weibo (via SamMobile) that Samsung is looking at its next Exynos flagship for the Galaxy S27, a chip that would be built on a 2nm process. However, in the meantime, Samsung would go for a “full-line” (translated) use of Snapdragon chips in the Galaxy S26, suggesting the same for Galaxy S25.

This wouldn’t be the first time Samsung would have opted for this route, as the Galaxy S23 series also went for Snapdragon only. It also makes some sense, as Qualcomm’s latest chip, built on the new Oryon cores, is considerably faster than previous generations, which were already beating Samsung’s Exynos chips by a healthy margin.

However, there’s still a lot of room for Samsung to still use Exynos throughout all of this, so it’s too early to say anything for certain.

Of course, a potential issue with all of this is the current Arm and Qualcomm dispute, which could see Qualcomm losing its Arm license soon, with the potential of bans on products using the new chips. There’s a lot of uncertainty around that case right now, though, so we’ll have to wait and see how things shake out.