If you are due a smartphone upgrade and were looking to get Samsung flagship next year, there appears to be some good news. Samsung is reportedly facing challenges with its inhouse Exynos chips and may be forced to use a different supplier for the entire S25 range.
If you didn’t know, Samsung not only produces TVs and smartphones. They also do insurance, banking, ship building and a whole lot of other unrelated things. One of those things is the manufacture of processors/chips.
Samsung chip making
Samsung has what they call a foundry, from which they produce chips. Companies like Intel and Qualcomm that design their own chips can (and have) contacted Samsung to produce the chips for them in the foundry.
Think of it like how you see an iPhone labeled ‘Designed by Apple in California.’ Apple works with companies like Foxconn who then build the phones for them. Samsung does the same for chip designers.
Samsung goes beyond that and designs its own chips which they then manufacture in their own foundry. As you can imagine, this is the best case scenario for old Sammy.
For those kinds of chips, Samsung doesn’t have to pay a designer or a manufacturer. This means higher margins on those homemade chips.
Samsung’s inhouse chips are called Exynos and we’ve had them for years. Chances are that if you have used a Samsung phone, you’ve used an Exynos chip. If you’re using a Galaxy S24, you’re probably using the Exynos 2400.
Exynos vs Snapdragon
The Exynos chips are not bad chips. I think S24 users can attest that they have a good experience with their phones.
However, there just happens to be a chip maker with better chips – Qualcomm and their Snapdragon chips. Most years, Snapdragon chips are a little more powerful and efficient. It’s small margins most times if we’re being honest, but it remains a fact.
There’s no problem in a competitor offering slightly better chips. The anger Samsung fans have over this though is that Samsung uses both the superior Snapdragon and the Exynos chips in the same models.
For example, this year, the American market got a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Galaxy S24 whilst the rest of the world, including Zimbabwe, got one powered by the Exynos 2400.
So, same phone but different engines. Seeing as the processor is one of the most important components of a phone, can we say it’s the same phone if it has different processors in different regions?
Wherever you stand on that, it’s an annoying practice by Samsung.
Problems at the foundry?
There are reports that Samsung is facing problems in the manufacture of the Exynos 2500 chips that are to be used in the Galaxy S25.
Samsung is facing yield-related issues with its 3nm Exynos 2500 chips.
In simpler English that means a smaller than expected percentage of chips are passing quality certification during the manufacturing process.
This means that a significant portion of the chips are defective and must be discarded, leading to lower production output and potentially higher costs.
Although Samsung has not disclosed the exact yield figures, reports suggest that the low yields are a significant issue for the company and may impact the availability of the Exynos 2500 chip in the upcoming Galaxy S25 series smartphones.
If that comes true, then Samsung will be forced to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite in all Galaxy S25 phones, regardless of region.
If history serves, this will be a benefit for non-American Samsung users who will get to use the superior Snapdragon chip.
The Mediatek risk
Before you get too excited about the Snpadragon-powered S25, know that there are rumours that Samsung might be looking to use Mediatek processors in the S25 in some regions.
Mediatek is yet another chip manufacturer whose chips are competitive. However, Samsung hasn’t traditionally used any Mediatek processors in its flagship phones. So, it’s a bit of a shock that they could be considering this.
It shouldn’t be that shocking though because Sammy’s latest highest-end Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra tablet rocks the Mediatek Dimensity 9300+ processor.
So, it wouldn’t be that big of a shock if Sammy uses Mediatek in the S25. To be honest, just like with Exynos chip, regular users won’t really feel the difference or even care.
Why does Samsung do this?
It all goes down to cost. We talked about how Exynos chips are the cheapest for Samsung. Mediatek comes in cheaper than Snapdragon.
There are reports that the Mediatek Dimensity 9300+ costs $40 cheaper than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. Now, Samsung sells millions of its flagships and so that is a meaningful amount of money.
For every million phones sold, Samsung saves $40 million if they go with Mediatek.
So, for Sammy it’s all about cutting costs. It’s too bad the users don’t get the best chip on the market. However, the question remains, if most people can’t tell the difference, is it such a bad thing that they are getting a slightly inferior chip?
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Chipsets for ordinary users is a no brainer basically many people in this region use their phones for Whatsapp and voice calls & taking pictures so I see no fuss with the issue of chips. It’s tantamount to someone buying an Alienware computer to play music and watch movies 😁😁😁 classic definition of insanity. The people from Sammy as you call them did their market research and found out this is a tech savvy deficient region , no need for powerful processors for these goons ( you know very well they call us people of inferior intellectual capacity) …. Sammy can even drop the mediatek processor and opt for the cheaper Unisoc processor that suits this region lol 😂😂
We want Snapdragon chips. Better in every way. Better NPUs, best benchmarks, best efficiencies. Some Exynos powered phones aren’t that snappy, but again, maybe it’s in mid range phones, not in Flagships.
Me personally I don’t like the fact that this year they only gave the Snapdragon chips to Americans
Thank you for sharing, I think other they just like the without knowledge of specifics details. So to Samsung it’s a win for them. In terms of market share.
If they decide to use Mediatek this year let it be Universal if they decide to switch back to Exynos let it be Universal. No to separation of processors by region. What’s with the discrimination.
Meanwhile Techzim here is one for you to write about:
“The YouTube mobile app is starting to hide its countdown timer and grayed-out skip button when it plays ads.” Source = Android Authority. Let’s talk about it, shall we!
Aah @Captain Jack, vamwe tinonga tichida kurowa ma games like PUBG which can require powerful chip on it’s heavy settings. Ini i wouldn’t buy this phone for everyday average use. Ndakutoda kugara nemaphone two these days. One for daily use, WhatsApp etc. And it should have battery bho. Then the other mainly for games and maybe movies at times.
Mediatek is crap. TBH you if Samsung switches to Mediatek they’ll see a significant drop in their flagship sales next year. They tried doing what Apple did with their bionic chip which is far superior to the exynos. Exynos is not bad its just that Samsung uses Android and it can be difficult to optimise a chip to run well with the OS. Apple Bionic chip is not great on paper but you get a great and snappy experience when using your device its because they design the hardware and optimise the software to run perfectly with the hardware. Thats why you see apple’s flagships don’t need large ram.
I always tell people the reason why I always go for apple devices is software optimization. You don’t get lags or glitches as much as an android device.
This is an interesting issue. l think Samsung should be fair and transparent about this and offer maybe a tiered pricing system irrespective of whichever market the country is served and say ok if you want superior performance here is the Snapdragon version, however if you do not game, watch vids and are a light user we have another option the Exynos one.
Of course they would have to price them appropriately depending on what they want people to do, if they want more people on their inhouse processors, they should aggressively price them than the outsourced variety and vice versa. l think Apple did this with some phones some years ago, were there was a two tier system the cheaper ones got the previous model chips whilst the newer ones got the current version. As users were fully aware there was really no issue.
Imagine if you will you are in the UK and you are paying more for your phone than the US for whatever reason, tax, competition etc but you were getting the inferior product, how would you feel? l think Samsung really abused people for a long time on this point, l have had some people are so against that they do not buy FEs or other versions featuring the home grown variant. Interesting l would not go so far but l do not game on phones and l rarely watch videos except maybe sent on whatsapp, so it is not an issue for me but if your phone doubles up as your entertainment hub, work station and portable pc that could be a big issue.
By the way l am sure you have heard of the new Snapdragon and Intel chips which are allegedly delivering Apple silicon like performance. Can you please do a piece on this, l think most of us who cannot afford to even mention Apple would greatly benefit from that.
As a side note, l have really enjoyed the articles on solar, can you not make it a recurring piece where you talk of current costs, options, packages and pros and cons of the various types, providers etc. Look in a country where the state power utility is overwhelmed, underfunded and generally a huge disapppointment, it would really be a public service if you do this. l get it takes time and effort but l am sure those purveryors of power products would also be glad to showcase what they offer so l think it is a win win.