The main player in the smartphone processor market is Qualcomm, followed by MediaTek. However, Samsung prefers to manufacture its own processor for most of its phones. In 2024, they have a vast lineup of Exynos chips ranging from budget ones to flagship.
The latest flagship chip is the Exynos 2400. This was launched earlier this year after Samsung took a year-long break from making flagship chips. Hence, there was no Exynos 2300 released in 2023.
The Exynos 2400 opened to a surprisingly positive reception. There were no heating issues or issues with performance and efficiency this year, and we hope Samsung can keep this up for 2025.
Exynos 2500 confirmed by Samsung
With the recent past of Exynos being said, the company has confirmed its next generation of flagship Exynos, the Exynos 2500. The confirmation came during the company’s latest earnings call. The company also revealed that System LSI wants to ensure a stable supply of the Exynos 2500 chips.
This chip is going to be the company’s second 3nm chip this year. The first one was the Exynos W1000 for Galaxy Watches, which was announced earlier this month. So far, the Exynos W1000 has been used in Samsung’s latest Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Watch Ultra.
Exynos 2400 has a unique setup with 10 CPU cores in the cluster, 4 of which are efficiency cores. The Exynos 2500 might continue with a similar CPU cluster to improve efficiency.
It’s really difficult to compete with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 since it’ll use Oryon cores. That’ll offer excellent performance and efficiency, to the point where they can even choose to drop further efficiency cores if they wish. Samsung has to compete on performance to get more developers to optimize their chipsets for more demanding games.
Exynos 2500 in Galaxy S25 Series
Generally, every year, Samsung launches its S series flagships with both Qualcomm Snapdragon and Exynos chips. The Snapdragon is usually reserved for a select few countries, while the Exynos is given in most.
The Exynos 2500 confirms the same trend of Exynos in most countries is likely to repeat next year. The only exception to this was the Galaxy S23 series, which had Snapdragon SOC in every country.
Considering that Samsung’s previous SOC was good, this one should improve upon using Samsung’s new second-generation GAA processing technology. It’s among the best 3nm fabrication available now, with a good yield rate.
However, reports say that Samsung will not use the Exynos 2500 on the S25 Ultra model. It will remain exclusive to the S25 and S25 Plus in some regions. Reports say it’ll have a 10-core cluster, with 1 Cortex X5 Core at 3.2 GHz. This is the Prime core and the highest-performing one.
Then, we’ll get three performance cores. Three Cortex-A730 cores will run between 2.3 and 2.5 GHz. Two more mid-tier performance cores at around 2 GHz will accompany these performance cores. Finally, we’ll mostly get four efficiency cores (Cortex-A520).
The GPU will also get an upgrade. Samsung has their in-house Xclipse 950 GPU. It uses AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture. It’ll also support better ray tracing. We can also get some AI-related chipset improvements on the 2500. Speaking of which, we’re not sure whether Samsung will call it the Exynos 2500. Some reports suggested that they might call it a “Dream” chip or start a new naming scheme.
