Samsung Galaxy S23 Series To Reportedly Ditch Exynos Chips Altogether In Favour Of Qualcomm | Digit

For a while now, Samsung has been using its own in-house Exynos chipsets – alongside Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs – in its Galaxy series of smartphones. However, if the latest report is to be believed, Samsung could be ditching Exynos chips altogether for its upcoming Galaxy S23 lineup. This would mark the end of an era with Samsung foregoing the practice of producing the same handset with two variants using region-specific chipsets.

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1. Qualcomm will likely be the sole processor supplier for Samsung Galaxy S23 (vs. 70% shipment proportion for S22) thanks to the next flagship 5G chip SM8550 made by TSMC 4nm.

— 郭明錤 (Ming-Chi Kuo) (@mingchikuo) July 8, 2022

As per renowned analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Samsung is likely to power the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S23 series with Qualcomm chipsets alone. This would be the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC – which will make its debut in November 2022. In the past, the company would use both Snapdragon and Exynos SoCs in its flagship phones and the model you got would depend on where you lived. 

Samsung Galaxy S23 series processor  

As mentioned earlier, industry insider Ming-Chi Kuo has said that Qualcomm will be the sole SoC supplier for the Galaxy S23 series of smartphones. In effect, the flagship Samsung Galaxy S-series devices will no longer be region-dependent from 2023. The Galaxy S23 phones will reportedly house the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC in all markets. This Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (SM8550) is expected to make its debut in November this year and we could start seeing devices adopt the SoC as early as December 2022. 

The Samsung Galaxy S23 series is expected to launch in January or February 2023 though. The fact that the S23 series will likely only house Qualcomm SoCs could be met with a sigh of relief by those in the European and Asian markets. This is because the Exynos variants of the Galaxy S series of phones have had a reputation of always being inferior to their Snapdragon counterparts, in terms of performance and battery life.

Kuo also suggested that the S23 series may not adopt the Exynos 2300 chipsets made by Samsung since it can’t compete with the SM8550 “in all aspects”. He also added that this decision could further cement Qualcomm’s dominance in the Android smartphone market.

Despite this, some reports still claim that Samsung’s flagship in-house SoC – the Exynos 2300 – is still being developed with the codename Quadra. There is no confirmation so far, but we could possibly see this chipset in Samsung’s Flip and Fold series of foldable smartphones.