Ryan Whitwam / Android Authority
TL; DR
- Samsung reportedly thinks the Exynos 2500, which is expected to power some Galaxy S25 models, won't lag behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.
- We've heard similar claims and reports before, so don't hold your breath for this.
Samsung offered the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus this time in two flavors, namely a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 variant and an Exynos 2400 model. Us own tests found that the Snapdragon models had better performance but worse battery life than the Exynos variants.
Now, Twitter tipster Revegnus has claimed that Samsung is optimistic about the Exynos 2500's performance against the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. The leaker specifically reports that Samsung believes the Exynos 2500 will not lag behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in terms of “quality”.
It's unclear whether the Exynos 2500 is seen as the better chip within Samsung because the Snapdragon's custom Nuvia CPU cores are “not good” or because the Exynos chip itself is actually good, Revegnus adds.
Exynos to be better? History suggests otherwise
This isn't the first time we've heard suggestions that an Exynos chipset could maintain the performance lead over Snapdragon silicon. However, the general trend is for Qualcomm's chips to maintain the performance advantage, while Exynos chips offer better battery life.
Qualcomm has also switched to TSMC in recent years to produce its high-end Snapdragon chips, while Samsung has stuck with Samsung Foundry for its Exynos silicon production. TSMC is typically more adept than Samsung Foundry when it comes to manufacturing, resulting in improved performance for high-end Qualcomm processors. So you shouldn't hold your breath for one Galaxy S25 powered by the Exynos 2500 to outperform the Snapdragon variant.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will also be the first smartphone chipset to feature the company's new Oryon CPU core. Meanwhile, Arm is reportedly aiming for a launch the most powerful smartphone CPU later this year in the Cortex-X5, and Samsung is expected to use this technology in the Exynos 2500. So we're still curious to see how the two chipsets compare when the Galaxy S25 series launches next year.