Samsung is working on the Decacore Exynos 2500 AP; can it compete with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4?

Samsung is looking to continue employing the “dual-chipset” system it used this year for 2025’s Galaxy S25 flagship series. Let’s look ahead by first looking back, shall we? Back in 2023, Samsung did not design or produce an Exynos 2300 chipset and the Exynos 2200 SoC was not a good choice for Samsung’s 2023 flagship phones. So all Galaxy S23 series models including the Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, and the Galaxy S23 Ultra were equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy application processor (AP).

This year, Samsung had an improved Exynos 2400 AP in its holster and the company took advantage of this by having the chipset run the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ in most markets except for the U.S. and China where these two handsets are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy SoC. The top-of-the-line Galaxy S24 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset in all regions.

Samsung is looking to continue this system next year with its Galaxy S25 flagship line; with this in mind, the company has started testing the Exynos 2500 chipset. On “X,” a tweet from PandaFlash (via Wccftech) notes that the Exynos 2500 has been testing well against the current Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip when it comes to CPU and GPU. But the chip that the Exynos 2500 will be going against next year will be the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.

The Exynos 2500 scores well against the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but trails the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4

Considering that early Geekbench results show the performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is running 46% ahead of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3and scored close to the multi-core tally rung up by Apple’s powerful M3 chip, it seems likely that the Exynos 2500 is not in the same ballpark as the next flagship Snapdragon 8 chipset.

But there is still plenty of time left for Samsung to make some changes to the chip’s packaging to make it more resistant to heat, which is important since the Exynos 2500 sports 10 CPU cores like its predecessor; It also could support LPDDR5T RAM. If enough tweaks can be made to the Exynos 2500, Samsung’s new in-house chipset might be more competitive with the powerhouse known as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.