Samsung’s flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S Series, have for the longest time either rocked a Qualcomm or Exynos chipset, depending on the region you buy the device from.
While the chipsets from Qualcomm and Exynos (Samsung’s own custom chipset) are top of the line, Qualcomm has always managed to produce better-performing ones meaning for the same Galaxy S Series model, the Qualcomm-powered one always performed slightly better or had slightly lower operating temperatures.
This imbalance in performance and cooling has made the Qualcomm-powered Galaxy S Series devices to be preferable to the ones being powered by Samsung’s own custom chipset.
Following the release of the Galaxy S22 Series earlier this year, the performance difference was more pronounced with the Exynos-powered Galaxy S22 devices being plagued with lags, slowdowns and software glitches that should not be present in flagship devices.
This massive gap in performance might have played a part in Samsung considering drastic actions, as a report from Sammobile indicates that the South Korean company will skip manufacturing flagship Exynos chipsets for 2 years.
The company will instead focus its efforts on creating a new high-end custom processor for the Galaxy S series. This custom processor is intended to mirror Apple’s A-series chips that the company uses on its iPhones.
With the project expected to take at least two years before the new processor is ready, this means the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S24 will not feature an Exynos chipset and will most likely be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for the Galaxy S24.
The report talks about Samsung dedicating around 1,000 employees to kickstart the project in July of this year, with the aim of commercializing the project in 2025. This is reportedly a crucial project for the company in improving its competitiveness in non-memory semiconductors.
Unlike Apple’s M1 chipset, which is exclusively used for the company’s own devices. Exynos chipsets from Samsung are more of a general-purpose chip like those from Qualcomm or MediaTek that can be supplied to other OEMs as well.
For instance, the Tensor chips used on Pixel devices are basically Exynos chipsets that are highly customized and configured to suit Google’s needs.
However, this will change with the new processor, as Samsung plans to keep it exclusive to the company. We might also see the chipsets being used on the Galaxy foldables as well, but other than that, the company will likely keep it from other devices to create that exclusivity on its most premium smartphones.
Despite the plan looking like it is well underway, a statement from Samsung leans towards the conservative side, “While we are continuously engaging with customers to develop competitive mobile processors, no specific decision has been made.”
With more OEMs deciding to develop their own chipsets including Oppo, it provides opportunities for highly customized chips that will likely provide more performance and better cooling as they are more suited to the specific hardware they are integrated with, unlike chipsets from Qualcomm and MediaTek that are normally produced to be used on a wide range of devices from different manufacturers.
