The Exynos vs Snapdragon debate has always riled people up. After a series of duds, Samsung went exclusively with Snapdragon chips for the Galaxy S23 series, making Galaxy fans (including us) happy. But this year, Samsung brought back Exynos chips to non-Ultra Galaxy S24 variants.
While the Exynos 2400 is a massive improvement over previous Exynos chips, it still isn't as good as its latest Snapdragon counterpart. And some more improvements are required to bring Exynos chips up to par with Snapdragon processors.
Galaxy S25 to only use Exynos chips worldwide?
Next year, Samsung's ambitions could be even higher, at least if we believe a wild rumor that claims that the company is planning to use only Exynos chips in the Galaxy S25 series. This rumor also claims that Samsung will use Snapdragon chips only in the Galaxy Z series in 2025, while the Galaxy A series phones to be released that year will consist of Exynos and MediaTek chips.
Is it possible that Samsung will exclusively use Exynos processors in the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and Galaxy S25 Ultra?
The Exynos 2500 is expected to be impressive due to these four reasons:
- Multiple reports have claimed that Samsung has created a separate team to optimize its next-generation in-house Exynos chip.
- This time, the company is expected to have tailor-made its next Exynos chip for Galaxy phones.
- The upcoming flagship Exynos chip will reportedly use Samsung Foundry's second-generation 3nm fabrication process.
- The Cortex-X5 CPU core from Arm will reportedly be faster than CPUs in Apple's A/M series chips.
All these changes are enough to bring massive improvements to Exynos chips. However, it is still difficult to believe that the Galaxy S25 could exclusively use Exynos chips.
Watch our Exynos 2400 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 video below to understand the performance differences between the two.
It would be costly for Samsung to use Exynos chips in North America
One reason is that it would be pricier for Samsung to pay license fees/royalties (for CDMA network compatibility) to Qualcomm in North America rather than using Snapdragon chips. Moreover, Qualcomm mentioned in its earnings call that it secured orders from Samsung for future flagship phones. Even if the Exynos 2500 is as impressive as it is rumored to be, it would be too extreme for Samsung to go fully Exynos.
Unless the Exynos 2500 (tentative name) is similar to or better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in every possible way (CPU, GPU, modem, and power efficiency), we think Samsung might not move ahead exclusively with Exynos chips next year. So, take this rumor with a pound of salt.
