Over the past few years, Samsung has truly established its dominance in the smartphone space. That holds especially true for the midrange to flagship levels. Due to regional differences, devices from the brand have often shipped with either an outsourced Qualcomm Snapdragon processor or the in-house Exynos option. These were considered to be trading places every year in terms of power, but were meant to be more or less the same. Sadly, Samsung devices with Exynos processors have been avoided in recent years due to being as much as half a generation behind its Snapdragon counterpart. Is it goodbye for real, and what’s next?
What’s the context? Well, there was a lot of hype around the latest Exynos 2200 found in the Galaxy S22 series, but it didn’t perform as well as expected. Not to say that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 was a perfect chip, but the appearance of Dimensity processors as another top contender left people wanting more. As such, Samsung axed the use of its Exynos processors in the upcoming Galaxy S23 lineup to be unveiled pretty soon. It appears that all these devices will be equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipsets instead.
There are a lot of signs that this is not an outcome the brand wanted, but it was seen as a necessary move. According to other sources, the previous Exynos chips were manufactured by an entity called Samsung System LSI. However, it appears that an all-new division will be founded to breathe new life into the name. This will be led by the executive VP Choi Won-Joon who became a part of Samsung six years ago and has some experience working at class-leader Qualcomm.
Reports indicate that an all-new custom Exynos CPU chip should be finished by 2025. In that timeframe, we can imagine that all Samsung flagship models will either be carrying options from Qualcomm, or if the tables turn, MediaTek. This should be ample time to produce something that is worthy of the Samsung Exynos name, considering just half a decade ago, many consumers specifically looked to buy the models with these chips installed. This custom CPU is set to launch with the Samsung Galaxy S25 lineup, and probably the foldables of the time as well.
We can imagine that the brand also wants to let some time pass to sort of erase the negative perception around Exynos or at least lessen it by that time.
What’s up in the air as of now is whether or not the Exynos division will continue working on the entry-level and midrange devices. Whether or not the chipmaking division will completely go into hibernation is up to Samsung, after all. I guess we’ll get back to you three years from now.
