We’re rapidly approaching Samsung’s usual launch window for its next Galaxy S-series flagship, and with it comes a pretty interesting teaser for the company’s chipset that might find its way into large parts of that lineup.
Samsung published a teaser for the “next Exynos” on YouTube, and while it doesn’t say much about the actual chipset itself — no clock speeds, core counts, or even any mention of “AI” — what it does say might be more interesting in practice. The video begins with the phrase, “In silence, we listened,” before going on to describe a rebuilt chip, “refined at the core, optimized at every level.” We finally see the reveal of the Exynos 2600, before the video ends with a jingle that I swear is a variant on the Stranger Things theme.
Typically, this might look like any other vague teaser for a new tech product (or component, in this case). But the context around Exynos makes Samsung’s use of “we listened” that much more interesting. It’s been a rough few years for the company’s chipset business; releases like the Exynos 2200 were largely panned across the board, while one of its foundry’s biggest customers — Google — left this past year for TSMC. Over the summer, reports suggested Samsung was caught completely off-guard by Google’s exodus, igniting an internal investigation as the company failed to find other chipset buyers.
Largely speaking, the last several generations of Exynos has been outperformed by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon series in both raw horsepower and efficiency, to say nothing of their competing modems. This teaser seems to signal a new direction for the Exynos 2600, something we’ve heard in previous leaks. In fact, if those rumors are to be believed, this chipset might outperform both Qualcomm and Apple’s latest mobile SoCs, and with any luck, its 2nm process might deliver improved efficiency to balance out all of that power.
As usual, it’s unclear at the moment just how much of Samsung’s upcoming trio will be powered by Exynos — dueling rumors from this fall suggest anything from an entire Exynos-based lineup (outside of North America) to “75%” of the S26 series utilizing Snapdragon — but we likely won’t need to wait much longer to find out. After initial rumors of a late February launch, current word on Unpacked is that it might be back in its usual January window. Whenever it happens, there’s a good chance you’ll see the newly-announced Galaxy Z TriFold show up as well.
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