We all know that the upcoming Galaxy S23 can be powered by next-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon eight Gen 2 chips, and benchmarks present that Qualcomm is lastly closing the hole on Apple’s A16 Bionic. Current rumors from TheElec recommend that Samsung isn’t ready for Qualcomm to lastly exceed Apple’s efficiency, and it could be copying the Apple and Google mannequin for designing its personal chips in-house. 

This appears complicated, as a result of Samsung already makes cellular chipsets with its Exynos platform. The Galaxy S22 used Exynos in sure areas, and loads of different Samsung units use Samsung chips beneath the Exynos model. Actually, there are different telephone producers like Vivo that purchase Exynos chips from Samsung. 

Why does Samsung promote to opponents? As a result of the chip division acts as its personal firm. Samsung Semiconductor is split by a authorized company firewall from different divisions, together with the Samsung Cell Expertise division that designs and produces smartphones, tablets and wearables. 

This time the telephone workforce is bringing the chips

What makes this new rumor fascinating is that Samsung Cell Expertise is taking extra direct duty for the manufacturing of the brand new chips. Previously, Exynos chips have been designed in cooperation with the Samsung System LSI group inside Samsung Semiconductor. Now, rumors recommend that the identical group that designs the telephones will design the cellular platform that drives them.

Korean business information web site TheElec says this group can be headed by Choi Gained-joon, who got here to Samsung from Qualcomm. By transferring chip design to the identical division as telephone design, Samsung is working extra like Apple and Google, every of which designs chips for its flagship smartphones.

Apple makes the A16 Bionic chipset for its iPhone 14 Professional and Professional Max. Google makes the Tensor G2 chipset for its Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Professional. Once we say that Apple makes the A16 Bionic, we really imply that Apple designed its personal platform, and a producer produces the chips in a semiconductor foundry.

Get excited for the Galaxy S25 (if it is even known as that)

Samsung is in a novel place as the one main telephone producer to supply telephones and likewise run a chip-making foundry, however these two sides of the corporate have been utterly separate. Samsung might as properly have been shopping for its Exynos chips from Qualcomm.

Samsung is predicted to make use of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon for now, however the Galaxy S25 (if naming conventions proceed) will use a chipset that Samsung has designed particularly for that telephone.

That may place Samsung’s new in-house cellular platform in direct competitors with an iPhone 16 Professional at launch in February, 2025, and an iPhone 17 Professional later within the yr. The previous telephone might use an Apple A18 chipset, and the latter might introduce an Apple A19, if the branding continues.

Evaluation: A Galaxy S25 with Samsung chips can be higher

The event of chip {hardware} and new smartphones does not at all times occur concurrently. They aren’t intimately linked beneath the present Samsung/Qualcomm relationship.

When Google is creating its Pixel 7 telephone, it could possibly alter the manufacturing of the Tensor G2 chip to spice up and allow new options as they’re created. Google’s picture unblur, one among our favourite new options on the Pixel 7 household, is unique to that gadget as a result of it’s someway enabled by the Tensor G2 chip. No matter a telephone must make picture unblur work, it’s within the Tensor G2 solely.

That’s the kind of synergy that we hope Samsung will create. Extra direct interplay between the chip design workforce and the telephone workforce, with out inter-corporate forms to roadblock growth, will hopefully assist the corporate create a cellular platform with actually distinctive options.

Sadly, it’s extra seemingly that Samsung is focusing on Apple with its growth mannequin, and never Google. Apple Bionic chips maintain the efficiency crown for cellular benchmarks. The most recent Qualcomm Snapdragon eight Gen 2 comes very near beating Apple efficiency, however Samsung doesn’t stand for shut. Samsung needs its Galaxy S to be probably the most highly effective telephone you should buy.

As a substitute of creating distinctive options, Samsung might focus totally on uncooked energy to beat Apple in benchmarking. The corporate was disillusioned by the Exynos platform’s failure to beat Apple for years, so the principle purpose may very well be the benchmark rating win. Hopefully Samsung will keep in mind different priorities, like environment friendly energy administration and revolutionary options, and never construct simply one other massive engine.