Samsung's new chip is a big bet to finally beat Qualcomm. The recently revealed Exynos 2600, made on Samsung's own 2-nanometer process, shows the company is trying hard to make its own processors matter again and rely less on paying for expensive Snapdragon chips in future Galaxy phones. An analyst, Samir Khazaka, thinks Samsung wouldn't invest so much in custom designs for chips like the upcoming Exynos 2800 if it didn't plan for them to dominate its lineup. The first major hurdle is fixing production yields, which were reportedly sitting at only fifty percent for the Exynos 2600.
The current deal with Qualcomm still means most Galaxy S26 shipments will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, a chip that costs a huge two hundred eighty dollars per unit. Samsung apparently wants to stop paying that massive premium, especially as prices keep rising. The long-term play involves using in-house CPU and GPU designs, like the Xclipse 960 GPU in the Exynos 2600, which uses AMD's RDNA 4 tech, to make Exynos chips good enough for most of its phones. A special division is apparently focused on this goal to compete with Apple and Qualcomm directly.
From a manufacturing standpoint, Samsung also wants to lead in chipmaking for other companies. Reports say it has finished the basic design for its next-generation 2nm process and plans an even more advanced version in two years. The success of the Exynos 2800, potentially with a custom Samsung GPU and CPU, could decide if future Galaxy S27 models ship with more Samsung silicon inside. Once the Qualcomm agreement ends, the plan is to drastically boost Exynos production across the board.
The current deal with Qualcomm still means most Galaxy S26 shipments will use the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, a chip that costs a huge two hundred eighty dollars per unit. Samsung apparently wants to stop paying that massive premium, especially as prices keep rising. The long-term play involves using in-house CPU and GPU designs, like the Xclipse 960 GPU in the Exynos 2600, which uses AMD's RDNA 4 tech, to make Exynos chips good enough for most of its phones. A special division is apparently focused on this goal to compete with Apple and Qualcomm directly.
From a manufacturing standpoint, Samsung also wants to lead in chipmaking for other companies. Reports say it has finished the basic design for its next-generation 2nm process and plans an even more advanced version in two years. The success of the Exynos 2800, potentially with a custom Samsung GPU and CPU, could decide if future Galaxy S27 models ship with more Samsung silicon inside. Once the Qualcomm agreement ends, the plan is to drastically boost Exynos production across the board.
