We’ve got some new speculation around the Samsung Galaxy S25 series to bring you, and it concerns perhaps the most important component of them all: the chipset that’s going to be powering these flagship smartphones.
According to South Korean outlet The Elec (via GSMArena), the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25 Plus will use either an Exynos 2500 CPU or a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, depending on the region. The S25 Ultra, meanwhile, will be fitted with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in every market.
This is a question that comes up every year – just how much Samsung will rely on its own chipsets compared to those manufactured by Qualcomm. In fact, the rumors on this front when it comes to the Galaxy S25 have already started.
The Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus, and Galaxy S24 Ultra are all powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 from Qualcomm, while the Galaxy S24 FE uses the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the US and Samsung’s own Exynos 2200 processor everywhere else.
A tale of two chipsets
What we can be sure of is that the Samsung Exynos 2500 chipset is definitely on the way: Samsung announced that it’s coming at a special technology preview, and it’ll bring with it 1.7x faster performance overall and 14.7x faster AI performance compared with its predecessor, the Exynos 2200.
As the Elec notes, the Exynos 2400 never saw the light of day due to issues with stability and speeds – hence the Galaxy S24 going all-in with Qualcomm. The Samsung Galaxy S22, meanwhile, used a mix of the Exynos 2200 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
While Samsung has consistently been keen to put its own chipsets inside its own phones in the interests of building better devices – like Apple and Google do – it has struggled to get the Exynos line to match the Snapdragon offerings.
We’ll have to wait and see whether or not it manages the trick in 2025. The Galaxy S25 phones are expected to launch in January or February, and we’ve already seen unofficial renders of what these handsets might end up looking like.