An All-Snapdragon Galaxy S25 Series Was Inevitable, Really

It probably won’t be too surprising to learn that the Samsung Galaxy S25 series — the entire series — is powered by Qualcomm’s premium Snapdragon 8 Elite silicon this year — the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, to be exact. Whether you’re a US or global consumer buying a baseline or Ultra model, there’s no Samsung Exynos chip in sight, though the company remains tight-lipped on the exact reason. The good news for us is that this ensures battery, feature, and performance parity across the field, but for Samsung, it looks like another chipset setback.

Anyone familiar with the long-running Samsung Exynos versus Qualcomm Snapdragon saga will know that the race is sometimes close and other times not so much, but in recent years, Qualcomm has gradually been gaining the upper hand. As far back as 2022, both the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Exynos 2200 inside the Galaxy S22 ran overly hot, owing to yield problems at Samsung Foundries and its 4nm node, resulting in the GOS throttling controversy. Qualcomm addressed this issue by switching to TSMC for an 8 Plus Gen 1 refresh, the 8 Gen 2, and all of its subsequent chips, but Samsung remained trapped with its underperforming node. As a result, the Galaxy S23 series went all in on Snapdragon for the first time, while Samsung claimed it was “reorganizing” its chip business model.

Samsung seemed to have at least partially recovered with the Galaxy S24, which returned to an Exynos and Snapdragon regional split. That is, except for the Ultra model, which featured the 8 Gen 3 exclusively in all regions. Rumors persisted that Exynos yields were still not brilliant, and opting for Qualcomm in its most premium of premium handsets is a tacit admission that either the performance differential was too great or that Samsung couldn’t make enough suitable 4nm chips. Even today, rumors abound that Samsung asked TSMC to manufacture its latest Exynos but was declined, likely due to conflicts of interest.

C. Scott Brown / Android Authority

Even as the gap re-narrowed last year, Qualcomm veered down a road Samsung couldn’t follow with this year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite and its in-house Oryon/Phoenix CPU cores. A return to custom Arm CPU development marked a significant shift for Qualcomm and the Android ecosystem, which finally levels the playing field and even exceeds the performance of Apple’s custom Arm-based CPUs. If Samsung wants to hang with the very best, the 8 Elite is really the only game currently in town.

The Oryon-derived Pheonix L and M cores in the 8 Elite not only provide performance in excess of Arm’s off-the-shelf Cortex-X and Cortex-A solutions used by Samsung, Google, MediaTek, etc, but have also resulted in a notable benefit to energy efficiency and, therefore, battery life, in the handsets we’ve tested so far. Qualcomm’s latest Adreno architecture also throws massive amounts of GPU power into the mix, along with its usual assortment of AI, networking, and other improvements.

Qualcomm’s custom CPU ramps up the pressure on Samsung after years of manufacturing issues.

Those with a long memory will remember that Samsung also had its own custom Arm CPU cores in the form of Mongoose. This effort ran from 2016 and was retired with 2020’s Mongoose M5 after producing a string of middling results, particularly regarding energy efficiency. Today, Samsung has no custom CPU efforts to approach performance or efficiency parity with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon. Arm’s latest CPU and GPU cores certainly aren’t sluggish; they run wonderfully in MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400, for instance. However, Samsung’s conundrum is that it, ideally, needs to duck the bad press from any meaningful gap between would-be Exynos and Snapdragon versions of its handsets.

Even if it was viable from a manufacturing standpoint (we know the Exynos 2500 exists; it’s more a question of how good the yield is), opting for Exynos this generation would have resulted in a much wider discrepancy of capabilities across its Galaxy S25 line-up than in previous years, which it’s been keen to avoid as much as possible in the past. That said, Samsung might still have opted for the dual-chip strategy if its 3nm manufacturing setup had been issue-free; we just don’t know. In any case, Samsung has probably picked the best option overall, but we’ll have to be prepared to pay the “Snapdragon tax” for this extra performance — the 8 Elite doesn’t come cheap.

Is Exynos destined for foldables or the FE instead?

Ryan Haines / Android Authority

Although Snapdragon may have taken the crown for yet another Galaxy generation, the battle with Exynos certainly isn’t over. In a recent earnings call, Samsung recommitted to its custom silicon development efforts, noting that it’s concentrating on supplying chips for “flagship products” this year while preparing its next-generation chips based on a future 2nm node. Likewise, rumors suggest its current 3nm setup might finally be in a better state, just in time to ramp up Exynos 2500 production in time for the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and Galaxy Z Fold 7 later this year.

Still, this presents Samsung with the same dual- or single-chip strategy conundrum for foldables. Does it attempt to keep up with what’ll almost certainly be the superior Snapdragon 8 Elite and hope international markets won’t mind, or simply plump for one over the other? Rumors suggest Samsung is keen to use its in-house chip in at least some models. Perhaps Exynos for the more mainstream Flip and Snapdragon for the power-user-oriented and more expensive Fold makes the most sense, but Samsung decision-makers might feel differently, I suppose.

Exynos might be MIA from the S25, but we could see it in 2025’s foldables and FE models.

If Samsung is consigned to silver in the performance metrics, at least for the time being, Exynos should still have a future in the Galaxy FE line-up, at the very least. The slightly trimmed-down Exynos 2400e in the Galaxy S24 FE performs admirably for heavy workloads and gaming, and is a key factor in keeping the price a very reasonable $650. Samsung is also reportedly preparing a Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE, another more affordable model that would be prime for another e-variant of Samsung’s flagship Exynos chipsets.

I’m repeating myself lately, but we’re long past the point of absolute top-tier performance being all that important for a brilliant smartphone. If anything, the sky-high prices are making ultra-premium chips and phones harder to justify for many. Exynos doesn’t have to top the benchmarks to power phones that people, myself included, will want to buy. Pixels manage just fine with Tensor, after all. If Samsung can successfully navigate this troubled manufacturing and development period with a targeted chipset strategy, it may remerge with a true Snapdragon challenger in the coming years. Although that’s a tall order as things currently stand.

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Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus

Snapdragon 8 Elite power
12GB RAM
7 years software support